7. 5 Death, judgement and future life
I chose the title Death, Judgement and Future Life for this last section of my memories of Angie, for two reasons: firstly it’s the title of a section in the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book, which I became familiar with as a child in the National Children’s home and which was the current hymn book in Angie’s church in Oxford when we first met; and secondly, it sums up what happened when I lost Angie. She died (obviously) and there was judgement (eventually) for the people who killed her, and life went on (albeit changed for ever) for me and Hannah and Eddie and everyone else who knew Angie. In the current hymnbook[1], the corresponding section is called Death, Judgement and Eternal Life. I’m not so sure about that. I’d love to believe that one day I’ll be reunited with Angie and we’ll be together forever, but … well, I’ve never seen anything yet that convinced me it’s more than wishful thinking.
We’d been married for nearly twenty-five years when it happened. Like the typical husband that I was, I’d completely forgotten that our silver wedding was coming up. I got ready to go out as normal and kissed Angie goodbye on the doorstep. She was off-duty that day and I remember asking her if she had anything planned. She said something vague about needing to do some shopping. Then I went off and that was that.
What Angie didn’t tell me was that she arranged for Bernie to drive her over to Abingdon to get me something for our silver wedding. I don’t know why we went there before we got married, instead of buying our rings in Oxford, but we did, and Angie had decided to go to the same jeweller to find me something special for the occasion. I suppose it was a bit of nostalgia for her to be going back there after all those years. I don’t know what she expected to find – you can’t really buy jewellery for a man the way you can for a woman. Anyway, I never found out, because she didn’t get there.
I can still see the scene in my mind’s eye of me sitting at my desk that morning, trying to decide which piece of mindless paperwork to tackle first, when the Chief super walked in. That was unheard of and my immediate reaction was to try to think what it was that I could have done wrong to warrant him coming to give me a dressing-down in person. Then I saw his face, and I suddenly knew that he had come to break some bad news. He had that look that policemen put on when they go round to see the family of a victim of violent crime or of a traffic accident.
He told me that Bernie had rung him and asked him to tell me that Angie was dead. Of course, he didn’t put it in quite those blunt terms. I’m sure he let me down very gently, but I can’t remember the words at all – only the dreadful pounding of my heart as I tried to take it all in. Of course, I wanted to go over right away and see for myself. A uniformed officer drove me – I don’t remember her name – and we parked a few doors down, because there were so many vehicles outside already, what with the ambulance and police cars and Bernie’s car as well. It seemed to take forever to get there and all the time I was wondering what Bernie was doing there that morning.
The next thing I remember was standing there in the kitchen, looking down on Angie’s body. She had on a pale-coloured summer dress, with flowers on. It had red patches all over it where the blood had oozed from multiple stab wounds. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies before – some in even worse condition than Angie’s was – but it’s all different when it’s someone you know. I don’t know how long I stood there staring, before someone took me by the arm and led me back outside.
The first thing I saw then was Bernie talking to DCI Gordon MacBride. The Chief Super had put him in charge of the investigation into Angie’s murder. And then the next thing I knew, there was little Lucy grabbing me round the legs and frantically asking to be picked up. My first thought was that she must have been inside and seen the horrors in the kitchen, so I was relieved when Bernie explained that she’d left Lucy in the car while she went to let Angie know that they were there. Nevertheless, it must have been deeply traumatic for a three-year old to see all the grown-ups running round like headless chickens trying to work out what had happened.
Bernie insisted on taking me home with them – and MacBride insisted that we were driven by DI Alison Brown. On the way there, we discovered that Lucy had been taking in more than we thought, when she asked, very straightforwardly if Angie was dead. Bernie, being Bernie, answered her in a similarly straightforward way, which clearly surprised Alison. I wasn’t surprised, because I knew Our Bernie, but I did wonder whether it was wise being quite so open with a child as young as that. Lucy doesn’t seem to have come to any harm from it, so I suppose her mother probably knew best.
MacBride came round in the afternoon and questioned us both. It was only then that I realised that Bernie and I must both be under suspicion – me of having killed Angie before I went to work and Bernie of having done it when she got to the house. It was during the police questioning that Bernie told me about the business of going to Abingdon to get a wedding anniversary present for me. I know it’s illogical, but it somehow made me feel guilty, as if I was responsible for Angie’s death. It just seemed so awful that she had been thinking of me and planning a surprise present for me and I thought that, if she hadn’t been waiting for Bernie to take her to Abingdon, she’d probably have gone out by then, to do the weekly shop. Years later, Bernie told me that she had blamed herself for arriving just too late to stop it. Apparently she actually heard the killers I the house, but they’d gone by the time she’d opened the door. I don’t know what that says about us both. The psychologists probably have a name for it – some sort of syndrome, I expect.
After MacBride had gone, I suddenly realised that I had to break the news to Hannah and Eddie – not to mention informing Angie’s employer and her family in Jamaica and her friends at church. It was awful telling the kids over the phone, but there really wasn’t any alternative. Hannah and Laurence insisted on driving down to Oxford that very night, despite my trying to persuade them that they were in no fit state. Thy arrived safely enough, so probably I was worrying unnecessarily and they knew what they were doing. Eddie came down on an early morning train the following day. We all stayed with Bernie, because our house was still cordoned off by the police as a crime scene.
I won’t describe the police investigation. I wasn’t in any mood to pay a lot of attention and, as the days and weeks and eventually months wore on, I started to accept that we were never going to find out who it was that was responsible. In my job, I’ve often had to admit to crime victims that we’ve failed, and to try to explain to them why we can’t continue to investigate their case actively any longer. It wasn’t until it happened to me that I really understood how unsatisfactory that was for them. I’d always been a bit scathing of the people who demand “closure”, as if knowing who had injured them – and presumably, knowing that they were being punished – somehow made things better for them. Now, I started to see things from their point of view.
It wasn’t that I wanted revenge. I just wanted to be able to stop looking at all my neighbours – especially my white neighbours, because we all assumed that the attack was racially-motivated – and wondering whether they were the ones who had brutally murdered my wife in her own kitchen. That was one of the reasons that it was such a relief to be able to go and stay with Bernie, whenever it got too much for me living in the house where Angie and I had been so happy together. It came as quite a relief when I sold the house, because it meant I never had to go back and walk down the road feeling suspicious of every white face that I passed in the street.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to talk about Angie’s funeral, which was surprisingly revelatory for me. Angie’s parents were far too old and frail to make the journey from Jamaica to England, but the family wanted to be represented. I have to admit that I thought it was a mistake when they decided that her brother Joseph would come. Naturally, I didn’t say anything but it seemed like a mad idea for a man with cerebral palsy that was severe enough to put him in a wheelchair to attempt to cross the Atlantic, even with the help of a couple of his nephews.
Of course, I was wrong. And I was also wrong to worry about his insistence that we wanted to speak during the funeral. I hadn’t met him since that first time when Angie and I went over there for our honeymoon, so I was surprised how much his speech had come on. It was still sometimes a bit jerky and I could imagine people who didn’t know him thinking that he might be a bit drunk, but it was completely understandable. You could have heard a pin drop during the service while he explained all about everything that Angie had done for him when he was a child and then afterwards when she came to England to learn more about the therapy that could help him to find his voice, and to earn the money to pay for it. I felt tremendously proud of her – and humbled to think that she had chosen to marry me instead of going back to the family that meant so much to her.
Then, after Joseph had given his testimony, the whole congregation seemed to explode as people all wanted to tell their own story about how Angie had helped them or how kind she had been when they had been on her ward in the hospital or what a good friend or colleague she was. Bernie told me afterwards that some of them were people that she knew would never normally agree to speak in public. Even Eddie, who always refused when he was asked to read the lesson in church, stood up and talked about what a wonderful mother Angie was. I wish I could remember some of the things that people said. Perhaps that would make you understand just how marvellous she really was.
I started to wonder if I ought to get up and say something myself, but I couldn’t think of anything that would go even half way to doing Angie justice. So I just sat there letting it all wash over me.
Well, that’s the death bit over with. Judgement was a bit longer coming. In fact, I’d rather given up on the idea that we would ever know who killed Angie, never mind bring them to justice. MacBride came to see me to explain that the investigation was being stepped down. The file was being left open, but they weren’t going to continue actively working on it. I understood completely. I’d seen too many unsolved cases in my time to be surprised. In a way, it was a relief to know that there was no danger that I would suddenly be confronted with the killers or be required to re-live everything in court.
I was calculating without taking DCI Jonah Porter into account!
After his disabling injury[2], Jonah was looking for a case to tackle to prove that he was still up to the job and ought to be allowed to return to work. When he heard that Angie’s killers still hadn’t been found, he decided to have a go at solving the case himself. Only Jonah could believe in himself enough to think of taking on a hopeless case like that one – and only Jonah could be proved right by coming up with the answer! It makes you sick, doesn’t it? I bet MacBride felt a bit stupid when he found out.
I won’t go into all the details[3]. The main thing is that we discovered that it wasn’t a white on black racist attack. The killer was a black youth – tanked up with drink, by all accounts, despite it being early morning, and wanting to show off to his friends – who thought it was racial treachery for a black woman to marry a white police officer. Jonah managed to get the story out of one of the other lads in the gang and after that it didn’t take long to round them all up. I suppose that, being in a wheelchair, Jonah didn’t appear as threatening as most police officers. And, although it pains me to say so, he does have quite a way with him when it comes to interviewing reluctant witnesses.
They all got custodial sentences, apart from Leroy, the youngster who spilled the beans. I was glad about that. Leroy hadn’t actually taken part in the attack – he’d been outside keeping watch – and he’d been very young (only fourteen) and impressionable at the time, and quite over-awed by the older lads. By the time we caught up with him, he seemed to have turned over a new leaf and had a young family of his own to support, which would probably have all gone by the board if he’d been sent to jail.
Another reason that I was glad that the judge gave him a community sentence, is that, unlike the others, he actually had been a neighbour of ours. He was living with his Grandmother, Celeste, in a house just over the road from ours. I knew Celeste slightly, and I’d seen Leroy and but I had never spoken to him or his younger brother, who was also living with their gran. Angie knew them all; and of course, Leroy knew Angie and knew that she was married to a policeman. Apparently he told the others about that, and that was what prompted them to pay a call on our house. According to Leroy, they were expecting there to be nobody at home and they only intended to trash the place, not kill anyone.
I felt sorry for Leroy – I still do. He was only showing off to his ‘friends’, not intending anything to come of it, never mind somebody getting knifed to death. I wish he’d come forward sooner, but it’s understandable that he was afraid of what would happen to him if he did. And, to be fair, he probably would have been taken into care, away from his gran, and maybe spent time in a young offenders’ institution. They aren’t great at rehabilitation – or not in my experience anyway – and he wouldn’t have met the girl who gave him something more positive to live for. I’m glad he’s building a life for himself now.
Leroy’s younger sister, Stella, has become one of Lucy’s friends. Lucy doesn’t usually get on very well with her own age group. I think she finds them rather shallow, and they find her intimidating. Stella has enough life experience to be able to identify with Lucy’s priorities around caring for Jonah and working to become a forensic pathologist. She’s decided that she wants to be a police officer. I’m glad about that; we need more black officers in the service. I almost wish I hadn’t retired so that I could have her in my team!
So, now we come to the Future Life part of this chapter. Well, I’ll admit that the first couple of years after Angie’s death were pretty grim for me. Bernie made it a whole lot better simply by being there and by allowing me to stay with her whenever it got me down to be living in the house that Angie had made into our home. It was difficult to sit in the front room of an evening, the way we always used to, and not be expecting her to come in any moment to join me. And when I went to bed, it always seemed strange that she wasn’t there beside me – although, in fact, I’d often slept alone when she was working nights. And if the wind rattled the front door, I always felt an urge to go out into the hall to see if it was her coming in.
Hannah was very solicitous for my welfare, for which I tried to be grateful. Fortunately, she was far enough away that I only got the full force of her ministrations during brief visits. I’m sure she was grieving herself and looking after poor old dad was her way of coming to terms with her loss, but I’m afraid I found it rather wearing. I’m glad that she had Laurence to lean on during that period. Knowing that he was there with her made it a lot easier for me.
Eddie was different altogether. Being a young man, he wasn’t demonstrative in his grief, but I now he felt the loss of his mother very much. At the time, I probably didn’t realise this as much as I ought to have done; but it became very obvious when I announced that I was marrying Bernie. At first, Eddie simply wouldn’t speak to me. Every time I rang, he slammed the phone down on me. He made it very clear that he couldn’t accept the idea that I could even consider re-marrying so soon after Angie’s death.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself again. Eddie, very bravely, went back and finished his degree. Then, to my enormous surprise, he announced that he was going to Jamaica to find his roots. He’d made friends with the cousins who had come over with his Uncle Joseph for the funeral, and one of them had found him a job in the computer firm where he worked. I didn’t quite know what to make of this. I could identify with wanting to get away from home, with all the associated memories of happier times; but I wished it didn’t have to be quite so far away. I was glad that he was going to be living near Angie’s family, and maybe contributing to their, always precarious, finances; but I worried that this was because he felt that he didn’t fit in back in England among our mainly white friends. The bottom line, however, was a recognition that it was his life, not mine, and at least he had a job – which was the biggest anxiety for most parents of new graduates.
I mentioned before that Bernie had been Eddie’s friend and mentor for a long time. It was because he got on so well with her that I was completely taken aback when he couldn’t accept our getting married. Jonah has a theory that Eddie had a crush on Bernie and it was partly jealousy that set him against the idea; but I think it was simply that he couldn’t understand how anyone, even Our Bernie could replace his mother. And, of course, he was right. That’s why I married Bernie, who was the only woman in the world who could be relied upon to understand that and not to mind.
Well, there were a few other reasons, I suppose. Lucy was one of them. I’d always been a father-figure to her, and this put it on a proper officially footing. The other main reason was that Bernie was the one person who knew Angie nearly as well as I did. They’d been friends for almost the whole of our married life; so there wasn’t much that Bernie didn’t know about her. Most people avoid mentioning Angie in front of me. They’re afraid it will upset me, which it possibly might, but not as much as knowing that they are deliberately air-brushing her out of the conversation. And, because I know that it will make people embarrassed, I don’t talk about Angie much either. That’s why it’s good to have Bernie around. She doesn’t mind listening to my reminiscences – even if it does all end in tears sometimes – and she isn’t afraid to bring up the subject herself. Best of all, I know that she sometimes really wants to talk about her best friend as much as I do.
[1] Singing the Faith, © Trustees of the Methodist Church, 2011.
[2] Jonah was shot in the back and paralysed from the neck downwards. You can read his story in Changing Scenes of Life.
[3] If you want to know more, you can read about it in chapter 6 of Changing Scenes of Life.