The Black Widow

by Linda Calvey

  “Hello Linda, it’s a pleasure meeting you.” Giovanni kissed my hand. He was charm personified, wearing an expensive suit, a colourful tie and wearing designer glasses. His hair was receding, but he was an attractive man.

  “Can you help us?” I said, simply, referring to both Danny and me.

  “Linda, I have looked at your case and you should not be in jail. I will fight for your freedom, I promise you.” He was suave and sophisticated, clearly an influential man. In 2003, he managed to get my case put before the High Court to challenge Home Secretary David Blunkett’s failure to pass my case to the parole board. We were arguing they were in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

  I went to court to hear my case reviewed. My daughter Melanie and other members of the family attended. Mel was heavily pregnant with her third child – yet another grandchild I wasn’t able to care for.

  I was 53 years old, and I’d spent 12 years in prison by this point. I heard how my minimum tariff – set at just seven years by the trial judge – had been increased to 15 by the Secretary of State. Since then, the House of Lords had ruled on another case that minimum terms for mandatory lifers was “incompatible with human rights”.

  As I listened to my QC, a Mr Alan Newman, I gazed at my daughter, smiling at her, tears forming in my eyes. This time, this time, it would end well for me.

  But I didn’t walk out of that court room a free woman.

  Afterwards, I asked to see Giovanni. My request was denied. Giovanni was under scrutiny. It turned out he was a fraudster, not a real lawyer at all, and unable to meet me any further. Sometimes, I look at my life and think that I couldn’t have made it up. Fake lawyers, proposals from mobsters, hairdresser to Myra Hindley.

  I asked Danny for a divorce. We’d both realised in time that the only bond between us was Ron’s murder, and it wasn’t common interests or real love for each other that had bound us together. Being married – though it was never consummated – had changed our friendship, and so I asked him if he didn’t mind if we officially ended it, so we could get back to being pals.

  Danny agreed, and we divorced amicably.

  I spent years more inside, until one morning the same mousey-haired screw approached me.

  “You’re going to an open prison, Linda.”

  I looked at her like she’d told me I was meeting Mickey Mouse that day.

  “Open prison? That means it won’t be long before I go home…”

  The screw nodded.

  I felt a rush of joy. Oh My God, I’m goin’ home soon. It could only mean things were changing for me. I rang Mel and Neil straight away.

  “You won’t believe it, they’re sendin’ me to East Sutton Park in Kent.”

  “That’s amazin’, Mum, I’m so proud of you!” Mel squealed. I knew a lot of the struggles both my children had been through: drugs, homelessness, chaotic lives. My family had tried to keep it from me over the years so that I wouldn’t get upset. I wanted so much to return home to my kids, to show them I could go straight and be in their lives at last. I wanted to be a proper grandmother to their children.

  “I’m proud of you too, darlin’. Give my love to those babies, won’t you,” I said, hanging up. I felt like my life was about to start again.

  I was moved to East Sutton Park as I awaited the response to my parole application. I knew I was nearly there. Getting home was all I could think about, every hour of every day.

  One day shortly after I arrived, another inmate in the open prison told me one of the screws was looking for me.

  Oh my God, is this it? Is it finally time?

  I hurried in to see her.

  “You wanted me?” I asked.

  “Yes, oh, Linda, I’ve been looking for you all over!”

  “What’s it about?” I asked, curious and impatient. Had they moved my release date forward?

  But the guard shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and my heart sank. Her eyes were flitting about nervously.

  “What is it?” I asked her urgently. “Is something wrong?”

  “Ah, now that you’re here, Linda, I don’t know how to say this.”

  I frowned. What was wrong? What have I done?

  “I find it helps to start from the beginning,” I said. My nerves were beginning to get the better of me, and I was getting fed up with her evasiveness.

  “Well,” she said, “thing is, I was actually wondering…”

  “Yes?”

  She leant forward conspiratorially. “I was wondering, could you do a murder for me?”

  I was dumbstruck. I stared at her in horror, searching her expression, trying to find out what on earth she was getting at.

  “Stand up,” I said slowly.

  She looked at me quizzically. “What? Why?”

  “Stand up, now,” I snapped. Uncertainly, she obeyed.

  “Where’s your wire?” I demanded.

  “What?”

  “Your wire. Are you recording me?”

  “No, Linda! I’m serious.”

  I approached her in a business-like fashion and patted her down. All of a sudden, it was like she was the prisoner and I was the officer.

  “You’re trying to set me up,” I said, incredulously. “You’re trying to get me to incriminate myself so you can put me away for longer.”

  “No, really Linda, I’m not trying to do anything. I’m asking you a serious question.”

  I narrowed my eyes. I searched her again, then checked under the table. There was nothing.

  I stared at her.

  “Linda,” she began again, “I’m in trouble and I need your help. My boyfriend hits me, he does terrible things to me and I’m scared of going home. I need to get rid of him, but I don’t know how. Can you do it?”

  I was utterly shocked.

  “There’s no way I’d ever, ever consider doing such a thing. I’m no killer. I’m this close to release, and you’re asking me to murder someone? How dare you.”

  I stormed out of the office and went straight to the governor, insisting on seeing him immediately.

  “Sir, it’s urgent. Someone’s asked me to do a murder for them.”

  The governor’s jaw dropped. “That’s appalling. Tell me who it is and I’ll get them shipped out immediately.”

  I hesitated. “Actually, sir, it’s not one of your prisoners. It’s one of your staff.”

  The governor stared at me blankly. Then his expression changed entirely. Suddenly, he looked relaxed and confident.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Sir, this is serious.” I told him the full story. “You’ve got to investigate. One of your own staff asked me to commit a serious crime on their behalf.”

  “Linda, I don’t believe this and I will not investigate my own guards. My staff are honest, and I won’t have them being accused by the very people they’re looking after.”

  “In that case, sir, I’m going straight to my solicitor,” I said. “Unless you call the police right now.”

  Reluctantly, he agreed. The police were called, I told them every detail of what had happened, and they questioned the officer responsible.

  “It’s true,” they told the governor. “All the details the prisoner gave us about this guard’s domestic situation are completely accurate. There’s no other way the prisoner could have known all that.” But, in another travesty of prison justice, they couldn’t charge the officer. It was her word against mine, and as an inmate, a convicted murderer, I wouldn’t be treated as a reliable witnesses in court.

  “Sorry, madam, there’s nothing we can do.”

  Once again, I was left speechless by the double standards in the system.

  Every day, I was more and more convinced that justice was skewed against us prisoners. It wasn’t long afterwards that a teacher was found murdered in the car park
in the prison grounds – and it was automatically assumed that one of us inmates had killed her. The investigation was thorough and painful, and the authorities did their best to pin it on one of us, but the explanation turned out to be as simple as it should have been predictable. The teacher’s jealous ex-boyfriend had murdered her, and he’d done it on prison grounds with the deliberate intention of framing an inmate.

  “Move over and let Linda sit with you.” A Chinese man at a nearby table gestured to a white-haired fella sitting nearby.

  I’d been at East Sutton Park for a few months now, and they’d allowed me out on day release. My friend Kate Kray ran a restaurant not far away, and had invited me and a couple of friends over for Sunday lunch.

  “Of course,” the man replied. “It would be my pleasure if you ladies joined me.”

  “What a charmin’ bloke he is,” I whispered to my friend as we sat down.

  “I’m George. And you’re a friend of Kate’s?” He smiled. He was rather a portly gentleman, but he had a kind face.

  “I am,” I replied. “My name’s Linda.”

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “No, I’m widowed once and divorced once,” I said. “Are you?”

  “I’m divorced,” said this lovely man, and a shadow passed over his features. I took it that he’d been through a difficult time, and didn’t question him further.

  We chatted all afternoon, and when it was time to go, George said, “Can I take you out for a meal?”

  “You certainly can, but I’m only allowed out once a week.”

  George looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “Because I’m in prison,” I said, without an ounce of self-pity. I wasn’t ashamed, and so I didn’t see why I should hide it.

  George burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re that Linda! Linda Calvey,” he snorted.

  “Yes, I am,” I said, and we both started to giggle. It all seemed utterly ridiculous all of a sudden.

  We arranged for him to pick me up the following Sunday.

  That day, I waited for him. All the other visitors came and went.

  “He ain’t comin’, Linda,” one of my friends on the wing said, giving me a pitying look.

  We were sitting in the rather grand lobby of the prison, a former manor house which had 99 deer on the lands (only the Queen can have 100). I’d made myself up nicely, and had waited for almost an hour, but George was nowhere to be seen.

  “If he takes any longer, it won’t be worth our while goin’ out at all,” I said. “I’m not standin’ here like a lemon. Give me a shout if somebody pulls up.” I wandered off, leaving my friend in the lobby, convinced I’d been stood up.

  Five minutes later, there was an excited shout.

  “Linda, LINDA! There’s a red Roller turned up, it must be for you!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. A red Roller? I ran back and looked out of the entrance hall.

  George was standing with his back to the shiniest red Rolls Royce I’d ever seen in my life. For a moment, I was 12 years old again, sitting in my dad’s van, craning out the window to catch a glimpse of that remarkable sight, that red Roller, wishing I could have the kind of life that had such wonderful things in it.

  I was spellbound, choked up by the memory, and, above all, delighted that he’d shown up. That young girl inside me was dancing for sheer delight. The red Roller had finally shown up. All that yearning had found its natural conclusion. I could only laugh at the irony of it all.

  “A red Rolls Royce! I made it in the end,” I laughed to myself. I’d endured 18 years in prison, and here I was about to be whisked away, like the ending of a Disney film.

  “I hope he’s not a crook,” said a screw, whistling at the sight of the car. “I’ll get someone to check his number plate.”

  That brought me down to earth with a bump.

  Later, I told him that I was the Black Widow, but that nowadays I planned on being straight as a die. If he was a criminal, I said, it was best to leave things there.

  George laughed merrily at that. He’d made his fortune selling bleach, of all things, proudly declaring that he was the first to put it in plastic bottles.

  We shared stories about our lives, and I told him about that time I’d seen a red Roller and fallen in love with the high life.

  He smiled kindly and looked into my eyes. “Well, now you’ve got one.”

  After that, we saw each other every weekend. He was so smitten with me, he turned up at my workplace in a local charity shop – a move strictly forbidden – and so I was moved back to a closed prison for two months as punishment.

  “I’m so sorry, Linda! I wanted to see you. I hope this will make up for it.”

  George and I were sitting together like young love birds in the Cookham Prison visitors’ room. He drew a small velvet box from his pocket.

  “Go on, open it,” he said, beaming.

  I gasped. Inside was a large teardrop diamond solitaire ring. My sister Maxine had helped George pick out a ring for me.

  “It’s beautiful, George, oh thank you.”

  “Will you marry me, Linda Calvey?”

  I couldn’t speak. I thought I’d never find love with a kind, steady man, but I had.

  I nodded, and he placed it on my finger. The wheel of fate had swung all the way back up again. There was only one last thing that would finish its full circle – and that came sooner than I thought.

  “Linda, you got parole.”

  I was working in the kitchen back in East Sutton Park. I thought I’d misheard.

  “Say that again,” I said slowly, holding a large ladle in one hand. The prison governor was standing in the dining hall, smiling broadly.

  “You got parole. Your release date is here. Linda Calvey, you’re going home.”

  On 1 August 2008, my daughter Melanie’s birthday, I walked out of prison. I was on probation, though, and wasn’t allowed home yet. Instead, I was sent to a hostel for six months in Maidstone. That was standard procedure for released prisoners while officials found them work, but I was already past retirement age. There was no purpose in my being there. I was meant to be a free woman, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just go home with George. He accompanied me to the hostel the day I was released, and as we got out of the car, a man walked out of the door with a blow-up doll under his arm.

  George was horrified. “Linda can’t live in a place like this! She deserves somewhere far more respectable.”

  He lived in a lovely house just 45 minutes away in Canterbury, and my family were only 45 minutes in the other direction in Essex. I couldn’t believe that I’d have to sit out six months in such a dingy place. I was only allowed out to see George for Christmas.

  But those six months in the halfway house passed quickly enough, and I walked free. My prison life was over, and I was about to step into a bright new future with a lovely man at my side, my family intact and with a whole lot of grandchildren to love.

  The sun shone as George drove me away, his red Rolls Royce winking in the sunshine.

  Epilogue

  George and I married in a small village church in Kent, a fairy tale ending to a life lived mostly outside of society norms. Billy Blundell’s youngest daughter was a bridesmaid.

  You could say George and I were like chalk and cheese. He was placid, calm and steady, whereas I always had a rebellious streak: a woman prepared to risk everything, a woman burnt in the fire, but who rose like a phoenix from the flames of a badly-lived life.

  When George passed away four years ago, the papers called it the curse of the Black Widow. My third husband and I knew the tragic truth. He died of cancer, a happy man, loved by me and my family, and his many friends.

  The day we sprinkled his ashes, an old friend of my husband, a man called Simon, toasted us both. “Here’s to George – and to you, Linda. A chapter o
f your life has ended – and a new one starts now. I hope it is happier for you, though I know it’ll be just as exciting.”

  My new chapter starts now that I am finally able to lay to rest the many bizarre twists and turns my life has taken. I have been a bad woman, a sad widow and a mad gangster. I have lived on the edge of normality, always looking for the way to move forwards, the new path to take, never looking back – until now.

  In telling my story, I have told the truth about Ron’s murder – the blame lay squarely on Danny Reece’s shoulders. He did not like the idea he was standing behind my skirt tails, and is happy for me to tell the world at last that it was him who wielded the weapon, him who killed Ronnie Cook. Danny has been taunted inside prison for what the prosecution said – that he lost his bottle and couldn’t do the deed himself. He is happy for me to put the record straight. After all, he has done the time.

  I served eighteen and a half years, and yet I made it out. I still have so much to live for, so many good things in my life. My grandchildren know me as their nanny, my daughter and son have me back as their mother, and it is my mission in life to return them the love I have been given tenfold, because I can, because I’m a free woman with her life, and who knows? Maybe I could even love again.

  It’s still a journey for all of us, though our family is strong. We still live with the impact of my imprisonment, my life choices and the death of my Mickey. I never gave up hope that I would one day walk free, put everything behind me, and make a fresh start.

  Over the years, those notorious figures from the East End have died out. Brian Thorogood passed away three years ago, but he remained close to us all until his death. Ronnie and Reggie Kray died, Ronnie at the age of 61 in 1995, Reggie at the age of 67 in 2000. In 2002, Myra died as a result of a heart attack at the age of 60, while at the time of writing Rose West is still alive, housed in an all-female maximum security prison in Durham. Charlie Bronson is still campaigning for his release.