THE SEARCH, THE BRIDGE

February 1994

?There wasn't any huge panic at the point. It seemed weird, but everybody thought maybe he didn't want to go [to America] or he'd just gone out, or something.'

? band spokesperson's comment to the NME, 25 February 1995

When it became clear that Richey had been missing for twenty-four hours, Martin Hall visited the Metropolitan Police at Harrow Road in West London to lodge a formal missing persons report at ten a.m. on Thursday, 2 February:

Form 584(C): (abbreviated)

Height: 5' 8"

Eyes: Brown

Circumstances: Subject is a member of a band?Subject has made a previous suicide attempt and is taking anti-depressants.

***

At this stage Richey's disappearance wasn't thought of as really serious. Everyone knew he'd had problems, and maybe this was just his way of dealing with not wanting to go to America ? at least that's what people started to surmise after his mother spoke of her conversation with Richey from Tuesday night.

'Mam just said the words, "Richard's gone missing",? recalled Rachel Edwards to the Sun. 'I stood there rooted to the spot. I was stunned, but at that point I believed he would come back. I think everyone thought Richard would return any second with a grin on his face. But as the hours went by it became more and more ominous. No matter where he was he had always phoned home and spoke to Mam, even if it was just to say, "Hello". Then the police became involved and the whole investigation started to retrace his movements. It was only when we went round to Richard's flat in Cardiff that we realised he had been back there. He left a trail of clues but we have never been able to work out what they meant.?

With the police now involved, the band and Richey's family were doing what they could to find out quickly where he might have gone. Graham Edwards, Nicky Wire and the Cardiff police visited Richey's Anson Court apartment and what they found only caused more worry and confusion over what Edwards might be up to. Richey, or someone, had obviously been home. Under the clipped magazine-page gaze of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, James Dean and Kate Moss, Keith Richards, Ian Curtis and the other portraits on the wall was Richey's passport. It had been left on a desk in full view for anyone who walked in. Also found in the apartment was some Prozac, Richey's bank cards, and a £2.70 toll ticket from the Severn Bridge with 30? change. The ticket indicated that the crossing occurred at three p.m. While it's very likely that Edwards had returned to his flat and deposited these items himself, no one saw him return there, so the possibility of someone else doing it on his behalf cannot be completely discounted.

It could be that these items had been deliberately left in a place where they could quickly be found. If Edwards had wanted to dispose of them he could have thrown them into the river or taken them somewhere else where they would never be recovered. But why might he have wanted these things to be spotted? Could the ticket have been a clue as to where Richey was going to end up? And, if this was the case, why would he want to leave clues anyway? The leaving of the passport could perhaps be taken at face value as Richey saying, 'Look, I'm not leaving the country', or it could be viewed, as many chose to see it, as a decoy to stop people looking further afield. As would become apparent, it was relatively easy to acquire a short-term passport in 1995 and at least one sighting placed Richey at a passport office. Edwards leaving behind his medication, or at least some of it, was more worrying. The implications of what his unhinged mental state might lead him to do worried everyone.

Soon afterwards the police checked Richey's bank account and found that he'd been withdrawing his maximum £200 per day from cash machines for the two weeks leading up to his disappearance, giving him a total of at least £2,800 in cash. It was becoming ever more obvious that he'd been planning whatever he was doing for some time. From the day he vanished he never used his cash card again. Some speculated that he needed the money for the American trip, but he was on band business and wouldn't have needed such a large amount of cash. It was also mentioned that he'd ordered a new desk for his flat from a Cardiff store, but there was no record of that ever being paid for and, besides, that would only have accounted for half of the money he'd withdrawn. This money was required for something else - perhaps to cover other transport arrangements and alternative ID.

After Edwards had been missing for two days, Nicky Wire began phoning around hotels asking whether Richey had checked in during the previous twenty-four hours. The closest he got was a Swansea businessman called Richard Edwards. But if Richey had checked in to a hotel, he would have been unlikely to do so under his own name. The family placed a notice in the local paper's 3, 4 and 5 February editions that said, simply, 'Richard, please make contact, love Mum, Dad and Rachel.' Hall Or Nothing, meanwhile, called in a private investigator to check other possibilities ? ports, airports and hospitals ? but there were no signs at all.

James Dean Bradfield was in America alone, saddled with the task of handling the pre-tour press interviews. At each stage he had to explain that Richey hadn't made the trip because he had an ear infection. The wider world was unaware of Richey's disappearance, so no one outside the Manics' inner circle was looking for him. If he had been spotted by a member of the general public, they would have been unaware of the importance of the sighting.

Missing for four days. On Sunday, 5 February, David Cross ? nineteen-year-old Manics fan from Aberdare, Mid-Glamorgan ? took a bus to the Newport bus station and got off to buy the Sunday newspapers from a nearby shop. He was a penpal of US-based Manics fan Lori Fidler. David Cross knew that Fidler was friendly with the band and with Richey in particular. As Cross went about his business on that Sunday morning, he was unaware that Richey was considered 'missing'. What happened next was recorded in his official statement to the police, taken on 21 February: 'As I approached the newsagent's I saw Richey James Edwards. He was stood alone near to a silver grey coloured car. I approached him as I was going to the shop. Although I do not know him, I said to him, "Hello, Richey, I'm a friend of Lori's." And he said, "How is she? How is she doing?" I said, "She's fine." He looked at me and said, "I'll see you later." He was wearing a dark, blue-coloured jacket. I noticed he looked withdrawn and pale. I am positive it was Richey Edwards.' It's known that Richey had friends in Newport but later enquiries revealed that none of them had heard from or seen Richey around this time. So, assuming this sighting was authentic, where had Richey been sleeping for the past few nights?

Lori Fidler is a name that kept cropping up in reports.[36] She was supposed to have told The Sunday Times that on 2 February she'd received a call that may have been from Edwards. ?I was out at the time,' she said, 'and my girlfriend took the call, the day after he went missing. There was that beep-beep on the line showing it was from overseas. The man on the other end just said, "Hi Lori," and then hung up. I think it was him.'

Missing for six days. One of the most intriguing stories from the first week of Richey's disappearance came from Anthony Hatherall, a forty-something taxi driver from Newport. His account seems to have some credibility because he was not a Manics fan and appeared to have nothing to gain from his story. It began at seven a.m. on Tuesday, 7 February at the King's Hotel. Here, Hatherall picked up someone he later described to police as 'a tall, slim man with a gaunt face'. Hatherall also commented that the passenger spoke with a cockney accent, but the taxi driver thought it was a fake one from the off and so asked for £40 of the fare to be paid upfront. The passenger then began directing Hatherall around various South Wales locations. First, he asked to be taken to Uplands, then to Risca and up the valley to Blackwood. His Cockney 'accent' occasionally slipped into a Welsh one and the passenger said he was looking for his boss who had broken down but that he didn't know where he was. Despite the fact that he was supposedly looking for someone, the passenger asked if he could lie down on the back seat and said that Hatherall should avoid using the motorway because he 'was always using the motorway'. Eventually they reached Blackwood and went to the bus station, but after simply saying ?This is not the place', the passenger asked to be taken to Pontypool railway station. Upon arrival at the station, the passenger said he had to get out and make a call. He returned a few minutes later and the journey continued. It was later ascertained that Pontypool train station did not have a public telephone. The final leg of the trip saw the passenger ask to be dropped off at Aust services over the Severn Bridge. The passenger paid the remainder of the £68 fare, then Hatherall drove off without a second glance. A service station was a strange place for someone to alight unless they had a way of getting away from there ? a previously parked car or a friend to collect them. And if this person had left the car there in the first place, how had he got from there to Newport? If this had been Richey, then it's possible that no one was looking out for him at the time (the date of the private investigator being hired is unknown). With his shaved head making him less recognisable to fans and members of the public, it's conceivable that Edwards could have been coming and going as he pleased, all the time unnoticed.

Richey's family and friends naturally became more concerned after he had remained missing for several days. They had hoped that he would return or have been found soon enough that they would not need to go public, but ? as a week passed without so much as a hint as to where he was ? it soon reached the point where a public appeal would have to be made.

Two weeks missing. On Wednesday, 15 February, the South Wales police issued the first public statement about Richey's disappearance. It read:

Police are anxious to trace Richard James Edwards, aged 28 years [sic], a member of the pop group Manic Street Preachers, who has been missing from the London area since Wednesday 1st February 1995 when he was seen leaving the London Embassy Hotel at 7 a.m. It is known that on the same day, he visited his home in the Cardiff area, and he is still believed to be in possession of his silver Vauxhall Cavalier motor car. Registration No L519 HKX.

Richard's family, band members and friends are concerned for his safety and welfare and stress that no pressure would be put on him to return if he does not wish to do so. They stress that his privacy will be respected at all times.

Police are asking anyone who has seen Richard, knows of his whereabouts, or has seen his car, to contact them at Cardiff Central Police Station on 0222 222111, and ask for the Crime desk or CID office.

Should Richard himself hear or see this appeal, his family and friends are anxious for him to contact one of them or the police to let them know he is safe and well. They again wish to stress that Richard will not be urged to return or reveal his whereabouts if he does not wish to do so.

A brief band statement issued via Hall Or Nothing on the same day stated that they had nothing to add and asked for 'sensitivity regarding this matter'. Graham Edwards then made an appeal on Cardiff's Red Dragon Radio with DJ Adrian Masters. 'All we know is that he left the Embassy Hotel in London on the first of the month and he left without giving any reason, and just sort of disappeared into thin air,? said Graham Edwards. 'Obviously everyone in the family is concerned, and we just want to get in touch with him to know that he is OK. We've phoned all his friends and all the acquaintances that we can think of; nobody seems to be in touch with him at all. All I'd like say is, Richey, if he's listening, please get in touch, just a phone call just to let us know you're all right. If he needs time to be on his own, then that's OK with everybody but if he does have a problem that we can help with, he'll have strong support from his family and also from his band, Nick, James and Sean.'

This sudden burst of press interest generated many more enquiries and led the South Wales police to issue a further statement on 16 February. This announced that 'Although there is still no news on Richey, there is no evidence that he has come to harm.?

Unbeknown to all involved, and while these appeals and statements had been filtering through the media, a massive piece of the puzzle was about to come to light. Two days earlier, on 14 February, Richey's silver Vauxhall Cavalier had been given a parking ticket at the Aust services. The next day, it was still sitting there ? apparently untouched ? so the services manager alerted the police. Twenty-four hours later, on Thursday, 16 February, Avon and Somerset police identified the car as Richey's and informed his family. There were now four police forces involved in the case: the Metropolitan Police (investigating the scene of his reported disappearance), the South Wales police (at the address of his permanent residence), Gwent police (conducting interviews with friends and family) and now the Avon and Somerset police (looking into the discovery of his car). In this pre-internet age, information was sometimes slow to circulate.

What tests had the car been subjected to? My attempts to gather any information from the Metropolitan Police had been ongoing for well over a year, and eventually I gave up after the vast majority of my questions went unanswered. One of my last communications with the Met Press Office told me that the car 'was searched by police and nothing of any evidential value was recovered'. This told me nothing. 'In your email you said that this information in your opinion would not cause any distress to the family,? they continued. 'The family in communication with us on this matter at the end of 2008 disagree.' My questions about the car remain unanswered, as do those about Richey's hotel room and his Cardiff flat. In 1996, Select magazine was given access to Richey's police file and even reproduced the missing person report in the pages of their magazine. By 2008, all such access was locked behind a closed door.

How long the car had been left at the services is unknown. No one had spotted Richey there, he hadn't checked into the motel on the site, and no one had seen him leave. Again, the question has to be asked: was Richey ever there, or did someone dump the car on his behalf? Assuming that he did leave it there himself-in the midst of the constant stream of businessmen, long-distance lorry drivers, families on days out and other assorted flotsam ? Edwards could have been invisible in his own personal pain, while life passed by and through him. Services manager Tom Cassidy told the NME, 'I reported it to the police, the car could have been a stolen vehicle for all we knew, and on the Thursday they traced it. The car was locked and there were no clues from that as to what may have happened. There was nothing suspicious about it at all, no suitcase or note or anything that we could see. We know as little about this as anyone else. We wish we could be more helpful but all we know is the car was here and that's it. Nobody saw him here, but then a lot of people pass through every day.'

Even if Richey had been the passenger in Anthony Hatherall's taxi on 7 February this still leaves seven days on which he is completely unaccounted for. Closer inspection of the car revealed that it seemed to have been 'lived in'. Empty cigarette packets were scattered about inside and the battery was flat, which some people saw as evidence he'd been sleeping inside the car, using its heater and playing tapes. A carrier bag was found inside, containing the photos of his parents he'd taken on his last trip to see them. In the cassette deck was Nirvana's In Utero.

Two arguments question the length of time that the car had been left there. On the one hand, if it had been there for many days it would probably have been given a parking ticket before 14 February. On the other hand, the battery would have been unlikely to be flat if he'd only just arrived. One possible explanation is that he arrived on the thirteenth, then slept there overnight and ran the battery flat while sleeping in the car. He could then have left it there on the fourteenth once he realised it could take him no further. The next problem is where he went next. If he was going to throw himself off the bridge, why hadn't he done so two weeks earlier? If he had planned his disappearance (as suggested by his taking out the money), what had he been doing for two weeks and and where had he gone to now? He could have been preparing any number of possible escape routes and places to stay. If he was still in South Wales after two weeks, this suggests that he wasn't planning to go far ? unless that was yet another decoy. Had he been sleeping in his car for two weeks? Had he been using his cash to stay in B&Bs under an assumed name? Had he been staying somewhere in preparation for a permanent move?

DI Frank Stockholm was running the Cardiff Central branch of the investigation in 1995. 'Until we have positive sightings there is not much more we can do,' he said. 'All the inquiries that can be made have been. We are now relying on information from other I people. If Richard Edwards wanted to disappear then he is quite entitled to. Our only concern is for his safety. If he is prepared to contact us in the strictest confidence then we wouldn't pass the details on, we wouldn't tell anybody except for his parents if that is what he wanted. If he is unwell and needs medical treatment then we can arrange that, he can be seen by a police doctor and then he can leave. We just want him to get in touch so we know he is alright. He could have hitched a lift on the M4 or M5 and gone somewhere else. He could have left the country. We are keeping a very open mind. He could be anywhere.'

In the week after the news of the car find had filtered out, the public began getting in touch with the police ? but this was a trickle rather than a flood. If news of the disappearance had been spread earlier, would someone somewhere have a positive idea about where he was? Would someone have spotted him at Aust? David Cross and Anthony Hatherall contacted the police, as did Lori Fidler about her phone call. A woman from Guildford reported seeing a hitchhiker with a guitar case, but that was soon ruled out.

The Manics cancelled all upcoming engagements, including dates in the USA, Europe and Japan. The planned single release of ?Yes' was postponed indefinitely. Everyone was entering a state of limbo. Everyone could only run through the details, over and over, in their heads. Everyone could only sit and wait.

***

For those outside the inner circle of friends and family, it was easier to speculate about possible outcomes without the burden of intense personal grief. Many fans and the music press at large had watched as Richey unravelled in front of them. Few could look away ? it was grimly fascinating: a sick sideshow in the world of pop. With Richey gone, an obvious place to look for clues was to investigate each key person's last encounter with him. Had they missed a subtle hint? Had he done or said anything that should have raised their suspicions? What more could they have done?

The night before Edwards vanished is ripe for further investigation. Why had he concealed his unhappiness about the American trip from his bandmates (if indeed he had), but quite openly told his mother his true feelings? Precisely when had he passed on Novel with Cocaine? What was in the box left in the room and what exactly was decorated on the outside?[37] Was it true that he'd left a bath full of water? Who really was Jo? The answers to at least some of these questions remain in the Met Police file, which I was told is one of the biggest missing persons files they've ever had.

'If you want to be that cryptic about it, you could spend half your life investigating everything,? said James Dean Bradfield.

'The front cover [of the box] is Bugs Bunny, so I thought perhaps he's in Disneyland,? added Nicky Wire. 'The only grey area is the service station. It?s just like the lyrics he gave us beforehand. I went through a phase when I was just looking over and over because there was collages in there and stuff. Me and James saw this picture of a house and it was like, "Is that where he is? It looks like a mad house in Bavaria.? We were going, "Perhaps he's there." You can go in his flat and you can look at every book, every thing. At the end of the day, you haven't got a clue.'

When Richey vanished, he left behind some of his Prozac. It's well known that Prozac lingers in the body even after someone stops taking their medication. So in Richey's case he may not have felt any of the effects for several days after disappearing, but when he did they were likely to be the textbook withdrawal symptoms that coming off certain drugs can engender: dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headache, abdominal cramps, chills and anxiety. Depending on the dose he'd been taking, if he stopped his medication on 31 January these effects might have begun kicking in any time after 5 or 6 February.

Although there were only two basic outcomes of Richey's disappearance ? he's alive or he's dead ? these can be split into sub?sections with various possibilities of what might have happened and when. The most depressing of these was that he killed himself. This could have been before 14 February 1995, when the car was spotted, on 14 February (perhaps as some kind of symbolic gesture), or at any time after 14 February ? maybe even years later. Another strong argument was that he could have vanished for a new life in any number of ways, either at home or abroad. People usually assume that he was alone, but the fact that he might have had an accomplice cannot be discounted out of hand.

***

The British seem to love a good mystery story, and a good old vanishing act has always managed to hold the public's imagination. From Agatha Christie to Lord Lucan, it's a fascination that endures. So what leads us to think that he might have pulled off one of the great vanishing acts? The obvious fact is that a body has never been found. Also, he was interested in the possibility of being able to drop out of sight and be reborn in a new life. His well-documented unhappiness regarding adult life could have been strong enough for him to want to follow that route. If he committed suicide, he never left any note or explanation and this might be seen as surprising given his apparent interest in suicide notes. Then there are the facts that came to light after he'd vanished: the £2,800 withdrawn from his bank account (more than enough to buy a second-hand car in 1995) and his car having been on the move for almost two weeks after his disappearance. Was the fact of his leaving behind his passport, bank card and medication a deliberate symbolic gesture to indicate that he no longer needed any of those things, or was the passport a red herring? In 1995, the sum of £1,000 would have been enough money to get someone with a boat to drop you off on a French beach in the middle of the night with no questions asked.

How easy would it have been for Richey to get another passport in 1995? Depending on how long he'd been making plans to disappear, he could have contacted the passport office, claimed that he had lost his original passport and been issued with a second one. He could then have left his original passport in his flat and used the new one to travel. There were no digital scans in use at this time. A second option would have been to walk into a post office and collect a British Visitor's Passport, which would have been difficult for police to trace and which required only a birth certificate for authentication. This security-downgraded option would have been sufficient for moving through most of Europe. He could also have obtained a passport on the black market ? a difficult but not impossible feat.

As well as being well versed in famous suicide cases, Richey Edwards was also fascinated by celebrity suicide notes. He'd used van Gogh's in 'La Tristesse Durera', and he'd said that Tony Hancock's (?Things just went wrong too many times') was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever read. He'd also played around with the concept by wearing 'Kill Yourself? T-shirts for photo shoots. The Manics' first single had been 'Suicide Alley', and they'd covered 'Suicide is Painless'. It seems hard to believe that someone so literate and so aware of suicide notes could commit suicide and not leave a note, if only to spare his family the pain of not knowing what had happened to him.

The statistics of UK suicides make for especially startling reading: recent information released by the Priory Group stated that there is one suicide every eighty-four minutes in the UK and Ireland. Men are more likely than women to kill themselves and account for 75 percent of all cases, with male suicides peaking during the ages of 25 to 34. 'People coming out of depression have a higher suicide rate than those who are severely depressed,? said Professor Chris Thompson, Director of Healthcare Services for the Priory Group. Richey seemed to be getting better shortly before he vanished. Most friends thought he seemed happier over Christmas 1994 than he had been in quite a while.

?I can honestly say that the five days at the House in the Woods was the only time when I thought he was back to being Iggy/Keith Richards, as opposed to Ian Curtis,? stated Nicky Wire. 'But that could have been because he [knew he] was going. It's so hard to speak about it, because for all we know, he could have gone insane. The morning he left, for all we know, he could have gone mad.'

***

Richey Edwards wasn't the only celebrity missing person in February 1995. Comedy actor Stephen Fry walked out of the West End production of Cell Mates on 22 February, just days after it had opened to poor reviews. He secretly travelled to France and Belgium while considering suicide. 'The reviews would not have affected me so badly if I'd not suspected they were true,' said Fry. 'I don't know what would have happened if I had carried on performing.' He was treated for a mild form of bipolar disorder, and later returned to work.

Missing for one month. The police were now receiving what seemed to be ever more elaborate theories about where Richey was and what he might be doing. Oxford University undergraduate Anna Bowles wrote to the NME and South Wales police that she thought Richey had gone to Germany to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust, which he'd studied at Swansea. 'I believe Edwards has gone to Germany on a visitor's passport to visit locations which are significant to the Allied Forces' liberation of the concentration camps,' she wrote. The letter was forwarded to the Met but its suggestion wasn't explored further.

Sinead O'Connor became involved when she told police that Richey might be staying with a mutual acquaintance in Hereford. O'Connor had tried to kill herself in September 1993 (while on tour with PeterGabriel) by overdosing on sleeping tablets and vodka. She and Edwards had been in touch before he disappeared, but when the police checked out her theory it proved to be another dead end. The police visited Henlow Grange health farm in Bedfordshire after reports of a 'quiet, withdrawn musician' being in residence, but again it came to nothing. As March approached, the whereabouts of Richey Edwards were still a complete mystery.

XVII

LIMBO

March to December 1995

The Severn is Britain's longest river. It eventually flows into the Bristol Channel and then into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. At high water, the river is a mile wide at the Severn Bridge. Because the river is tidal at this point, its currents and sheer size make it a daunting proposition. The local coroner said that if a body entered the Severn it might never be recovered.

***

It didn't take long for hoax callers to start dogging the investigation. A series of people claimed to either be Richey or know where he was staying. The drain on police resources was considerable. The Sun had a call from 'Richey' saying he was OK and that he'd been in touch with his parents. His parents had a caller saying, 'Hello Mum, it's me' before the phone went dead. Despite these painful taunts, the family decided not to change their number in case Richey did try to call.

By early March it was clear to all that this wasn't just a brief get-away or a lost weekend. It took James Dean Bradfield a number of weeks to come to terms with the seriousness of the situation and then he was overcome by a numbness that he couldn't shake off. Nicky Wire kept in close contact with Richey's parents and sister, but everything seemed so futile and he could see first-hand the effect it was having on them. For several months, Wire couldn't help wondering if every phone call and every knock at the door might be Richey.

?Wherever Richey has been in the world he has always got in touvh,? Sherry Edwards told the Daily Mail. 'Whether it was a quick telephone call or a postcard we always knew how he was doing.? The family clearly realised that press coverage was vital at the time and continued speaking to journalists as much as they could, but this coverage wasn't exactly overwhelming. This wasn't like a possible child abduction ? the sort of case that grips the headlines for weeks on end. This was an unstable rock star who had done this type of thing before.

Graham Edwards spoke to Welsh-language publication Golwg for their 23 March Issue. ?It's true that he had a bit of a breakdown last year and that he spent some time in a private clinic in London,? he said. 'Maybe what's happened now is a repetition but it has taken a different form. He didn't say anything to us, we had no idea that he was going to do anything like this. Like the majority of parents, we think we are on a different level to our children in truth. So his music wasn't something we could enjoy together. But we get on well as a family, generally a very happy family, maybe a hit boring.'

'He just said nothing,? said Rachel Edwards when talking about Richey's last visit. 'But now I realise he knew it would be the last time he ever saw me, which makes me think he had everything planned out.?

By May the police had given up actively searching for Richey. This was standard procedure; there was no evidence of foul play or that he had come to any harm. They had to focus their resources elsewhere. Rachel Edwards, however, chose to continue with her own enquiries. Since there was no central database of unidentified bodies, she systematically contacted every coastguard and coroner in the area. She also made contact with monasteries and religious retreats, but most were duty-bound not to reveal the identities of their inhabitants. The family wondered whether Richey might have withdrawn to one of these retreats.

The procedure for joining a monastery varies slightly from one to the next, but in general they initially suggest that a prospective candidate should stay for a weekend or a few days to experience a monk's life: the multiple daily celebrations of mass, the discipline of life in a abasic bedroom, working with the other monks, devoting life to prayer and living in near silence. These were all things that Richey might have thrived on. If this early stage goes well candidate may stay for ever-lenthening period, before becoming a novitiate, essentially a trainee monk. Years later, the novitiate may progress to being a fully-fledged monk. Only at this point does the individual take his vows of obedience, stability and conversatio morum. The first of these is, as at least one monastery's website describes, 'about the self-abandonment of love', as the candidate gives his life to the love and will of another. 'Stability' is the 'virtue of being steadfast and trusting when we doubt our ability to continue', a point that Richey seems to have reached during the events of 1994. Conversatio morum approximately translates as 'changing the way you live' and includes chastity, which, given Edwards' indiflferent attitude towards sex, would hardly have been difficult for him to come to terms with. Another monastery website talks about two vocations that have to be followed: one to monastic life and another to abandoning home and culture in a profound sense. If Richey wished to do so, he might have had time to visit a monastery before dumping his car.

***

In Match 1995 Dave Grohl debuted his new, post-Nirvana, post-Kurt Cobain band, the Foo Fighters. Oasis and Blur were battling to be the kings of Brit pop ? both would have number one albums by the end of the year, as would Pulp and Elastica. Radiohead were also about to make a big breakthrough. ?I stopped reading the press when they printed I was going to top myself,? said Thom Yorke. 'My girlfriend rings me up, really really upset, saying, "What's all this, what have you been saying?" You know, that's when I stopped reading it. That was enough for me. I had people warning me a few months before Richey disappeared, before he went away the first time, warning me that he was in a bad way. I thought that

Basically it was the British press that did it to Richey. Full stop. Although I?ve got lots of friends who are journalists, the few who I think were basically responsible for him having a breakdown I will always hold responsible snd I will always see what we do in that light.? This interview was a strange one. No one else had held the press responsible for Richey's troubles. Many people weren't even sure that being in a band had anything to do with it. Perhaps Yorke was too far away from what was really happening to know for sure.

With the music world moving along with barely a blip, the three remaining Manics eventually drifted back to doing what they did best. Nicky Wire had kept to himself and stayed at home, Sean Moore, likewise, remained based at his Bristol home, kitting out his loft, and James Dean Bradfield retreated to London. But in early May ? at a meeting with the band, Martin Hall and Richey's parents ? it was agreed that it was OK for the three musicians to start working again. Soon afterwards, they began rehearsing at Cardiff's Soundspace Studios.

By mid-July, a new series of stories were making the news. A sixteen-year-old girl from Skipton said that she'd seen Richey wandering the streets with a green rucksack and looking ill. No one gave much credence to that 'sighting' but within a week a more worrying development made headlines. On 21 July, the body of a tattooed man was found at Beachy Head in East Sussex. Local coroner Michael Davey contacted the Met at Harrow Road saying, 'This may be Richard Edwards. There has been very great press interest in this as he is a member of Manic Street Preachers popular music group [sic], known very well by you, I've no doubt. Please be aware before making public.? The body turned out to be some other unfortunate individual, but for a while all of the Manics' camp were again holding their breaths. The family of the deceased asked for his identity to be kept private.

A German fan, Monika Pommer, then claimed that she'd been sent a postcard by Richey with a London postmark of 3 February 1995. She refused to give the card, or even a copy of it, to the police. Instead, she wrote to the Met saying, 'I cannot and do not wish to surrender his last postcard. I do not think he would like me to do so, it is much too personal. I am always carrying it with me now that I think it was meant as some sort of goodbye. Personally I do not know if he is alive, but I would like to know the truth. If Richey does not return until August 20, 1995, or no other messages or news are confirmed, I will go to Cardiff to say goodbye be throwing flowers into the sea. I do not care what others think about it, I will never forget him. I will always love him. Sincerely yours, Monika Pommer.? (Pommer did send an earlier card from Edwards, written in December 1994, but the contents of that card have never been publically divulged. It has been reported that the Metropolitan Police still have the card.)

By late summer, the Met changed tactics and decided it might be beneficial to give the press access to the inner workings of the investigation. They even allowed police documents to be photographed and reproduced in the media. This would not be permitted today. Detective Sergeant Stephen Morey spoke to several publications and caused a mini-stir with some of his own opinions. 'You can hop a yacht and be over [seas] without a passport, landing in a small port,? he explained. 'It takes a wee bit of planning and a little bit of negotiation with the yacht skipper, but I would have thought it can be done. I'd have thought that if something like that happened, with the publicity that has happened, we would have been notified. Personally, and this is my own personal view and not the view of the Metropolitan Police Service, I believe that Richard Edwards may no longer be with us.

At every street corner there is potentially a Manics fan who would recognise him. He has so many out there. It is not as though he was just an ordinary unknown who has disappeared. Every fan is unwittingly looking for him. He has drawn no money since he left the hotel six months ago, nor asked his parents for any. In these circumstances I have to move towards the theory that Richey is no longer with us.?

Around the same time a feature appeared in the Sunday Times under the title, 'The Point of No Return?', and quoted Lori Fidler. Fidler later issued a statement disputing the article and her part in it. ?Without going into detail, I would like to say that ninety-five per cent of ?the facts" printed were not true,? she said. 'I had no contact with the paper and still have no intention of it.'
There was no united front regarding what was best for the investigation. Despite the openness of the police and continued appearances by the family, Gillian Porter at Hell Or Nothing was quoted as saying, 'We don't want to comment. We don't think any publicity is going to help now.? She did divulge that the note and parcel that Richey had left in the hotel room had been delivered to 'Just a friend of his, I am sure they were passed on.?

By now the Manics had been rehearsing for four months and had demos of around twenty new songs, some of which had been started before Richey disappeared. 'Loads of those lyrics had been around for a while,' explained James Dean Bradfield. 'No music has been written to any of his lyrics since he's gone missing.?

'We didn't feel comfortable with that,? added Nicky Wire. 'There's about fifty songs in there [the folder that Edwards left behind]. To be honest with you, they're no more horrific than The Holy Bible. You can't get any more low than that, can you really?'

In the first week of September, they travelled to France and set themselves up at the Chateau De La Rouge Motte studio. The first thing they recorded was a cover version of Burt Bacharach's ''Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head', and this was followed by a new composition titled ?A Design for Life'. Recording continued back in Bath and then with producer Mike Hedges[38] at London's Abbey Road Studios, where string sections were added. The aim was to return in 1996 with a new album.

***

Rachel Edwards' next public plea was via London Weekend Television's Missing at Christmas programme. Presented by John Suchet, the programme showed Rachel discussing Richey's physical traits. She talked about his shaved head and tattoos, and made a direct appeal to her brother. Although the latest 'sightings' included reports of Richey in Brighton, Cambridge, Liverpool Whitby and reading books in a shop on Charing Cross Road in London, the show prompted only eight phone calls offering possible new information.

Richey Edwards was neither the first nor the last musician to vanish, but he might just have been the most calculated. The reasons for other's flights are varied. In the case of Syd Barrett?s transforming into recluse and Jeremy Spencer (of Fleetwood Mac) being admitted to the Children of God religious cult, both were put down as 1960s casualties, while Joe Strummer escaped to Paris because he 'wanted a break'. Marvin Gave ran away to Belgium when faced with a $2 million tax bill and the breakdown of his marriage, while Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman chose Iceland as his sanctuary because he feared the world was about to end. All were located eventually. The 1983 film Eddie and the Cruisers explored the myth of the vanishing rock star with the fictional story of Eddie Wilson faking his own death and taking off with the master tapes of his band's unreleased second album.

Many of these escapes were, if not spur of the moment, then not completely thought out. Richey's case might have been very different. 'Richey is a very ritualistic person,' said Sony's Rob Stringer. 'He doesn't act arbitrarily, and the scary thing is, he's the most well-read person I've ever known, he would be able to tell you the last words of all the world's most famous suicides. He would know the contents of Kurt Cobain's suicide note off by heart, and he would know twenty different ways to disappear completely. He will have planned it. He may be in Tibet for all I know.' One report claimed that Stringer had loaned Edwards a book about staging a disappearance ? something Stringer later denied. Whether or not Stringer did this, Rachel Edwards commented that Richey was well aware of such books. Edwards was certainly aware of celebrity drop-outs. 'One of the best things I've ever read is J. D. Salinger,' Richey told EP magazine. ?After his big success, Catcher in the Rye, he locked himself away in a basement for twenty years. But he was still writing. He'd got stacks of manuscripts on his shelves, but no one's ever seen them.' Asked if he himself could do that, Edwards replied, 'I'd like to think so.'

Perhaps th? most intriguing link between Edwards and a famous vanishing is that of Arthur Rimbaud. The Frenchman?s dissatisfaction with ?modern life? was mirrored by Edwards? and his destruction of all his writings draws comparisons with Edwards throwing his into the river and/or passing them onto Nicky Wire for the rest of the band. Edwards also paraded around a photo?-shoot with Rimbaud's words written across his back. Rimbaud was presumed dead for many years after he vanished.

Edwards was also aware of writer Harold Brodkey, whose epic novel The Runaway Soul mined the author's childhood memories. It took him twenty-seven years to write. Brodkey later documented his own death from AIDS, writing into his final days in January 1996. Edwards could quote in interviews that 33 per cent of jump suicides had torn shoulder muscles from a reflexive instinct to grab onto the bridge and to live.

While many people have looked to Richey Edwards' intelligence to highlight their hopes that he vanished rather than died, one of many unanswered questions is whether he had the presence of mind to carry out any plans that he might have formulated. Assuming that he was still around when his car arrived at Aust on 14 February, he could have gone fourteen days without taking his medication. No one can know what mental and emotional state he would have been in at that point and what the avenues of escape might have looked like to a possibly confused mind. With statistics tacking up the theory that 'recovering' depressives are often more likely to commit suicide, Richey fitted that profile. He was also clearly feeling the stress of the upcoming US trip and the band's formcoming tour. He'd already broached the idea of being a 'stay at home' member of the band, but he couldn't face that option. His choices were becoming limited.

Why did he return to Wales? 'Basically, whatever he was doing, he was looking to escape,' said Andrew Evans, an arts and media psychologist, to Melody Maker. 'People often get that with fame. If you're too long in a situation that's stressful, the desire for escape becomes paramount. Then again, it's entirely possible he was disoriented, and trying to sort out his head by returning to his roots, memories and home surroundings, trying to piece together a puzzle. But he was certainly clever enough to escape. He could have done it with someone, in Wales, maybe. Someone who he could trust implicitly, perhaps an old friend, dating back to school days. Was there another person involved?'

Those closest to Richey were sceptical that the breakdown was explicably linked to his fame as a rock star. James Dean Bradfield speculated that the outcome might well have been the same had Edwards followed the path to becoming a teacher or lecturer. Richey's actions might have been in his psychological make-up all along, just waiting to surface.

The Vauxhall Cavalier was taken back to Blackwood and parked outside the Edwards' house. But after souvenir hunters repeatedly stole parts of the vehicle, it was sold and given a new set of number plates. The Manics were busy preparing to play a comeback gig of sorts as support to the re-formed Stone Roses at Wembley Arena on 29 December, with Richey nowhere in sight. Years before, Edwards had been asked what he would most like to be. His answer? 'Any animal that hibernates.'

XVIII

EVERYTHING MUST GO

1996 to 1998

The first Manic Street Preachers album to be released after the disappearance of Richey Edwards was called Everything Must Go. It was a title that resonated on several levels, with Richey's jettisoning of his place in society and the band's need to cast off their own collective past and move ahead among them. I'd been watching an old compilation video that gathered together the Manics' TV appearances and promotional videos from 1994 and 1996. Placed side by side and back to back, the changes from the Holy Bible era to Everything Must Go were stunning. Not counting the absence of Edwards, if you didn't know better you'd have sworn that it was a different band. Not only had the musical style and lyrical content changed almost beyond recognition, but the way the band dressed was about as different as it could be. The Manics hadn't embraced Britpop's retro tracksuit tops or the football-hooligan urban street-cred of Oasis, but they seemed to have stepped into (or out from) the pages of the Next directory. I struggled to think of any other band that had been so visually on the edge becoming so 'safe' in the space of one album. The aggressive war-ready uniforms had served a purpose, but with a change of musical tack ? and the obvious loss of a driving force in the band ? they had also decided that the songs had to say what was needed. They now dressed to let the music talk and their look be as bland as possible.

When they appeared with a four-piece string section on Top of the Pops to promote 'A Design for Life', I immediately thought back to 'Faster', with all the bowls of fire and camouflage netting. The trio now dressed in untucked shirts ? fresh out of the packet ? and slacks and cargo pants. This was a middle-aged catalogue shoot, and not one of James Dean Bradfield's slicked-back hairs was out of place. All three band members were relatively subdued in their movements and expressions. This was certainly a measured departure. If they looked like a walking advert, it was almost the case that they were exactly this: years later, Q magazine carried notes in its margins about the band's designer shirts and where they could be bought, along with phone numbers for those interested in making further enquiries.

The album-interview-tour treadmill was cranking up again but this time they had to steel themselves for the expected avalanche of questions about their missing bandmate. Right away, they were asked what Richey's family made of the band continuing. It emerged that Graham and Sherry Edwards had encouraged them to continue as soon as possible; they thought that the Manics' return to the spotlight might even flush out Richey from wherever he was hiding. All sides had also carefully set up the legal paperwork to differentiate the Manics' earnings pre- and post-Richey. As the band was using songs that Edwards had worked on, he was due to receive a portion of the writing credits for Everything Must Go. Edwards was given three full lyrical writing credits and two co-writing credits on the album, which ? as it turned out ? would be the biggest selling of their career to date. 'We've set up a trust fund so that all Richey's royalties go into this account under his name,' explained Wire. 'If he ever turns up, he's got his share. It was really depressing, doing all that legal shit. You've gotta wait seven years until he's declared dead. We were signing all these forms. We wanted everything to be proper, but doing that, it just makes him seem like a number. It was really sad.'

The interviews also revealed some of the pain and hurt that the band had been keeping from the public eye during the previous year. Nicky Wire talked about having to visit his local GP and being told that he should consider bereavement counselling, but it was more complicated than that. 'How can you go to bereavement counselling when you don't even know if someone's dead?' said Wire.

The band, and Nicky Wire in particular, had been keeping in contact with Richey's family. As well as dealing with his own emotions, Wire was also seeing first-hand what effect the disappearance was continuing to have. The sense of not knowing was suffocating. The band ? having perhaps been as close to Richey as family during the previous few years ? would not have been surprised to hear that he'd restarted his life somewhere in the UK. ?He could be in a sewage works in Barry, for all we know,' said Wire. 'Done a Reggie Perrin.'

'That's more plausible to me,' agreed James Dean Bradfield. 'Something that's very mundane. Rather than some kind of pilgrimage. To do something in isolation.'

Like any gripping mystery, the Richey Edwards disappearance brought out a number of conspiracy theories and now that the Manics were back in the spotlight, they had to field some awkward questions. Martin Hall had been approached by writers convinced that the band secretly knew where Edwards was, while a growing number of voices were muttering that the band had since made contact with Edwards and were keeping quiet about his whereabouts. After being asked these sorts of questions one time too many, James Dean Bradfield exploded, 'Once and for all, all of the stories that are going around, we haven't got a fucking clue! We swear on our lives. We've had journalists going up to Martin saying, "We know where he is", and it really upset him. And there's still the same level of scepticism. I've tried to blank it out, to a certain degree. I won't give anybody the illusion that I'm sitting here waiting, because we've all nearly fucked ourselves up over it and I've developed some kind of immunity towards it. I'd rather be shocked than wait on something now. Because I can't wait round any more.' For people who had never had to experience the disappearance of a loved one, some of the band's comments seemed harsh. The group admitted that they had put up barriers between themselves and Edwards and that the longer it went on the harder it would be for him to make contact again. Wire said that if Edwards returned he'd be constantly worrying about him, looking for signs, physical and otherwise, ?f any recurring disintegration. James Dean Bradfield got straight to the point. 'I couldn't be friends with him again, just for the sake of us three,? he said. 'If it went off again, just imagine how much it could fuck you up. It's my biggest nightmare. What would I do if Richey turned up and wanted to know me again?'

These had been the demons they wrestled with when sessions started for the next Manics album, an album that Terri Hall for one thought would never happen. She'd felt sure that Nicky Wire wouldn't have wanted to continue the band without Edwards. But while the search was on, Wire had sat at home with his thoughts and started sketching out ideas. One of many contradictions around the enigma of Nicky Wire is the anti-rock-star lifestyle that he withdraws to when the band isn't working. Gardening and watching TV take up much of his time; he's an avid sports fan but he doesn't travel much and rarely goes out unless he has to. The first new piece that Wire composed in 1995 was a long two-page poem tentatively titled 'A Design for Life'. He passed it on to James Dean Bradfield, who soon called him back saying he thought they'd got a great song.

Wire, by default, had been burdened with the sole responsibility of writing lyrics for the next album. After writing only about a quarter of the last album, this was a giant step, but the band had the fall-back position of a handful of songs they'd started working on with Richey before he vanished. Many of these used Edwards' words or were co-compositions between Edwards and Wire. When it came to actually recording, it was much the same as ever: Edwards was hardly a factor in that side of the Manics' work anyway.

The first day back at Soundspace was awkward but by the end of it they had played 'A Design for Life' and began feeling more optimistic about their future. 'We weren't going to try to write any music to the lyrics that [Richey] left,? said James Dean Bradfield. 'We would do songs that were already written, and they were Manic Street Preachers songs. Richey had heard them all in some form or another. We created ourselves a safety net, and once we'd got in there it was pretty easy, to be honest. From then on, it was just like normal itinerary really, thinking of a producer and writing songs, just getting on.' One positive thing, if that's possible, that arose from Richey's absence was that the remaining three band members had the weight of Edwards' musical expectations taken from their shoulders. The anticipated tensions about the band's future direction were no longer there; in some ways, the musicians now had more freedom to work and experiment on brand new material, even if Edwards was never far from their thoughts. Bradfield was I also looking forward to singing a whole line, as he put it, rather than a sometimes-confusing collection of words. Ironically, perhaps, it was partly Richey's absence from the Manics that led to the band releasing more accessible material that gained them larger audiences than ever before.

The new album's title, Everything Must Go, was taken from a play that Nicky's brother Patrick had been writing and the song of the same name became an anthem of both the Manics' rebirth and their rejection of their past. Wire's words ask for forgiveness ? of the fans who might have criticised them for continuing and of Richey for moving on without him. The talk of asking for explanations and escaping their own history seemed self-explanatory.

The songs featuring Edwards' words proved a little more troublesome. Richey had left the lyrics for 'Kevin Carter', which was based on the life of the eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. It was a semi-controversial choice to include the song on the album because Carter had festered with self-disgust after one of his photos of a dying child in Africa afforded him an unwanted celebrity status. He failed to cope with this situation and eventually killed himself. The story might have had parallels with Edwards' own. Either way, the band decided to use it and James Dean Bradfield spent many late nights wrestling with the music to fit the words, constantly asking himself if he thought Richey would approve of the music that he was adding to Edwards' lyrics. The result was one of the harder-rocking tracks on the album, and wouldn't have been too far out of place on The Holy Bible. 'Removables' had been around for a few years, and was typical of the abstract lyrical approach that Edwards was fond of. The other Richey lyrics were either tracks he'd heard the band play before he vanished or co-compositions with Wire.

In the summer of 1996, the fanzine culture that had served the Manics well in their earlier years was reaching its zenith. By the mid-1990s, the music press classifieds overflowed with fanzine adverts and some papers even ran reviews of them. This was the precipice of the internet age, and soon much of this sub-culture would be swept away as band discussion turned digital. The country was in high spirits with the Blur-versus-Oasis Britpop chart battle harking back to the heyday of the Beatles-versus-Stones rivalry of the 1960s. The Tory government had been in power for so long that people of a certain age couldn't ever remember Labour being in power, but that change was fast approaching. Meanwhile, the new Sky-led football revolution was peaking as England readied itself to host Euro 96 ? a further boost to the booming 'lad' culture.

Over the summer, the Manic Street Preachers were offered lucrative support slots with Oasis. To warm up for the first of these dates, the Manics played a cosy gig at Manchester's Hacienda club. This was perhaps the only time that Richey's loss really spilled over onto the stage. Nicky Wire cracked under the emotion and burst into tears, but once that was out of his system the rest of the shows went smoothly. A splattering of festival dates followed as sales of the album continued to soar. Riding the coat-tails of Britpop no doubt helped: even though they weren't really part of that 'movement', the Oasis support slots linked them to it by association. More than ever before, the music was being left to do the talking. 'We had to become more anonymous and live behind the music for the first time ever,? said Wire. 'And I just really missed being couched in that visual air that we used to have.' Despite only some of their songs featuring Richey's lyrics and the absence of Richey himself, the year was seen as the Manics' career summit. Of course no one will ever know how different they would have been if Edwards had remained a part of the band, not touring but working in the background on their lyrics.

In February 1997, the Manic Street Preachers ? self-styled outsiders of 1990s British rock ? reached their zenith in terms of public acceptance when they won Brit Awards for 'Best Album' and Best Band'. This broke the Britpop-only stranglehold that had seen Blur win four awards at the ceremony in 1995 and Oasis take home three awards a year later. Vinnie Jones and Colin Jackson were on hand to present the 'Best Band' statuette, which James Dean Bradfield dedicated to 'the wisdom of Mr Philip Hall and the coolness and intelligence of Mr Richard Edwards'.

?This is also for every comprehensive school in Britain which the government is trying to eradicate,' added Nicky Wire from the stage, addressing the final days of the Tory government. 'They produce the best bands, the best art and the best everything. The best boxers, too.' Noel Gallagher was filmed smiling from the crowd and seemed genuinely pleased. Then they played ?A Design for Life', and this was seen as their crowning glory.

***

Missing for two years. Things seemed to have moved no further forward than they had on the day Richey vanished, and a certain amount of frustration was creeping in. Rachel Edwards spoke to BBC Radio Wales for their Eye on Wales documentary, broadcast in mid-March. She revealed that the police effort had not been co?ordinated and that there were holes in the investigation that might have helped had they been identified earlier. The most shocking revelation was that footage from the 24-hour surveillance cameras perched atop the 450-foot bridge towers had not been analysed until two years after Richey's disappearance. 'I have been told by a police officer from the Met that the tapes had been destroyed and now, two years down the line, I find out that they are there,' said Rachel Edwards. 'It would have made a big difference to know that hose tapes had been viewed and to know that Richard wasn't on 'em.' Problems were highlighted in the communications between the Avon and Somerset police and the Metropolitan Police, along with the lack of any national policy to control information about missing persons.

A Met spokesperson went on record to talk about the CCTV footage. The cameras had been recording as usual during February 1995. My understanding is that they were viewed among a bank of monitors running in real-time while officers manned the CCTV centre. There was nothing untoward noticed at the time, but of course they weren't specifically looking for Richey Edwards at this point. It was unlikely that anyone would have been intently looking at the screens of the relevant cameras all of the time. ?The pictures from the camera were being watched by the police at the time of Richey's disappearance and nothing suspicious has been spotted,? said the spokesperson. 'If there were any figures on the bridge they would be so far away as to be unidentifiable. I doubt if we would able to tell if a figure was a man or a woman.? The footage did not show anyone jumping from the bridge.

***

The next big Richey story was delayed. The incident had happened back in November 1996, but it didn't make the news until March 1997. This very delay caused some doubt as to its authenticity from the beginning. Vyvyan Morris, a 48-year-old college lecturer from Swansea, claimed to have spotted Edwards at a hippy market in Goa, India. Morris was known locally as a singer and wrote a pop music column for the Swansea Evening Post. When he returned to Wales he said that he'd told the editor and various reporters at the Post about the possible sighting, and that ? surprisingly ? no one was interested. ?I was quite pleased,' said Morris. 'I just thought, "Good, leave the poor bugger alone." But my main concern of course was for his parents and family. So I just kept it low-key after that, and then I mentioned it last weekend in that interview about Badfinger, and it's all gone hysterical. I didn't want it to come out like that.' Many of Morris' comments seemed ambiguous: if he was glad that his editor wasn't going to act on the story, why did he tell him in the first place? And if his thoughts were only for Richey's parents and family, why didn't he inform just them, discreetly, as soon as he got home?

Morris had been travelling with his girlfriend and had found himself at an outdoor market in Anjuna when he spotted someone he thought he recognised sitting at a cafe. Initially, he couldn't place the face. By the time he realised who he thought it was, the man had left to get on a bus. Morris later told the police that he hadn't been able to place the man at first because the man was heavier than he remembered Richey having been and because he had long, matted hair and a suntan. After the man had left, Morris claims to have asked a local resident, Jim Reid (originally from Bath), about him. Morris was told that the man's name was Rick and that he'd been in Goa for about eighteen months. 'I can't be one hundred per cent certain, but

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 743