Jo Cox death: As Birstall mourns dead MP, village tries to fathom the two sides of alleged killer Tommy Mair

Murder suspect with alleged far-right interests was thought of in the village as mild-mannered, and, says a neighbour, had told her he had been teaching English as a foreign language

David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn and other senior politicians laid flowers in Birstall (PA)

As the police helicopter hovered all day above Birstall, as the Prime Minister laid flowers in the Market Square, close to where the MP Jo Cox was attacked, and as you toured a small town trying to understand the man suspected of attacking her, it was almost as if there were two Tommy Mairs.

One was the meek, mild, solitary man known to his neighbours. The other was the online Tommy Mair, alone with his bedroom computer, allegedly subscribing to far-right newsletters and, again allegedly, ordering a gun-making manual from a neo-Nazi group in the US.

It’s true there had been BNP activity in the Birstall area. In 2003 Birstall resident David Exley won a local council seat in neighbouring Heckmondwike.

But when The Independent spoke to the now ex-BNP member Mr Exley, he said he had never heard of Tommy Mair. He had asked around friends who, like him, had left the BNP as the party fragmented in 2009 but who still held the same far-right views.

“I know 99 per cent of the people who were members in Birstall, Batley and Dewsbury,” said Mr Exley. “None of them knew Tommy Mair. It sounds like he was a bit of a lone wolf.”

Police continue to investigate, assisted by the North East Counter Terrorism Unit. No charges have been brought against Mr Mair. But it does seem that if the 52-year-old really had engaged in far-right activity, it had not left the confines of the computer in his small council house on Birstall’s Fieldhead estate.

Indeed, had this been any other story, you might have gone to Mr Mair for an embodiment of mild-mannered, but vulnerable decency.

He had lived alone for 20 years, since the death of his grandparents who had, since he was eight, brought him up at the house in Lowood Lane. He helped the neighbours with their gardening. His own front garden was immaculate, his small lawn “like a bowling green.”

When his next door neighbour Diana Peters’ lawnmower broke, he started cutting her grass without being asked.

And together they moaned about what everyone thought were the only undesirable elements on the estate – the kids who engaged in rowdy underage drinking near their houses.

When some neighbours draped flags of St George out of their windows for the Euro 2016 football tournament, Mr Mair – regardless of what he may have been doing on his computer – did not join them.

According to Ms Peters, 65, he laughed at their misplaced faith in England’s footballing prowess.

A retired nurse, she had known him since he was eight. Or, perhaps, thought she had known him.

“I would sooner have believed that he had turned into Father Christmas than that he was a neo-Nazi,” she said, as a policeman guarded the house next door, and camera crews circled.

“He was so mild, almost meek in manner. He wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I would have thought he would have been frightened of guns.”

Mr Mair had been the quiet one, insisted Ms Peters. His younger brother Scott, 49, had been the noisy tearaway.

He may not have grown up in his mother Maureen’s house, but, said Ms Peters, he visited her in Batley on Sundays, “bringing her shopping”.

Police continue to investigate, assisted by the North East Counter Terrorism Unit (PA)

Incredibly, perhaps, Ms Peters was also adamant that Mr Mair had told her he had been teaching English as a foreign language to adults of foreign origin. He even said he had gone on courses to improve his teaching skills, Ms Peters recalled. She assumed he had been teaching recently arrived migrants from Eastern Europe and members of the area’s longstanding Asian community.

“It could have been both,” she said, “But it probably started with the Asian community because there is a big Asian community in the area.

“He said he enjoyed the teaching and that he seemed to feel he was helping people. At one time he was going there three times a week, but recently it might have gone down to once a week. I actually thought Thursday [the day of the attack on Ms Cox] was his teaching day.”

Others said that Mr Mair had been helping disabled children. It wasn’t immediately clear where Mr Mair had been teaching members of the immigrant community. Ms Peters said she thought he had mentioned nearby Dewsbury.

Jo Cox visiting her local fish and chip shop (Jo Cox/ Twitter ) (Jo Cox/ Twitter)

The possibility remains, of course, that the ‘teaching’ was actually a fiction, or a figment of Mr Mair’s imagination.

There had, by Mr Mair’s own admission, been mental health issues. In 2010 Mr Mair told the Huddersfield Examiner about getting work at a local park after being referred to a clinic for adults with mental health difficulties.

“I can honestly say it has done me more good than all the psychotherapy and medication in the world,” he said.

The precise nature of his mental health problems, however, was not spelled out.

Ms Peters, with 40 years of nursing experience, spoke of struggles with epilepsy in childhood, but said she had nothing at all to indicate that Mr Mair had mental health issues.

His half-brother Duane St Louis said the difficulties were nothing more disturbing than OCD, telling reporters Mr Mair had scrubbed himself obsessionally with brillo pads.

He added for good measure that his own mixed race – via a Grenada-born father – had never been a problem for Mr Mair. “We got on well,” Mr St Louis, 41, told the Sun.

Such was the shocked, bewildered backdrop as churches throughout the Batley and Spen constituency opened books of condolence in tribute to Ms Cox, a Yorkshire-born, uncommonly loved MP.

About her, the truth was all too painfully evident – “the best of humanity,” wrote her fellow Labour MP Hilary Benn in the book of condolences in St Peter’s, Birstall.

Equally certain was the verdict on Bernard Kenny, a 77-year-old local man, who happened to be passing and tried to restrain Ms Cox’s assailant. There was universal praise for the courage of the pensioner, who sustained a serious stomach wound and is now in a stable condition in hospital.

About Mr Mair, though, the truth remains to be seen.

And Ms Peters is left to reflect on what she knew – or thought she knew – about her quiet next door neighbour.

“I don’t think,” she said, “That there will be a person who ever met him who will have felt he was capable of doing this, even in his thoughts.”