Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years

by Kirby, Jacqui

  But deep down in my heart I knew that something wasn’t right between us. It was as though our daughter’s murder had drawn down an invisible barrier. Neither of us could see it or touch it but we both felt its presence; we knew it was there, slowly pushing a wedge between us which was growing wider with every day.

  While I allowed my deep grief to wash over me for all to see, Tony kept his tucked away like a neatly pressed shirt hidden in a locked drawer. Now and again, I would see glimpses of it and he would lash out at the randomness of Colette’s murder. Why our daughter? Why us? We were a good, close and happy family, so why did the killer choose to obliterate our family unit in one act of depraved wickedness?

  As for Mark, we both worried about him constantly. He didn’t talk about Colette much at all – he just couldn’t. Every time he thought about her, all he could see was his little sister lying in the field, battered, bruised and dead, cast aside like a rag doll. If he wasn’t in his room alone, he’d be out busying himself, meeting friends. Looking back, I think he found the grief at home oppressive.

  All I wanted to do was talk about Colette; all Tony wanted to do was get out of the house – I felt as if he was trying to escape from me and from us. I think he felt suffocated by my grief, if you can ever feel such a thing. Instead, he returned to work as a joiner. I couldn’t understand or accept it at the time but it was Tony’s way of coping, by working through it.

  ‘What can I do if I stay here?’ he would say. But his reasoning fell on deaf ears because I didn’t want to listen. I wanted him home with me, not at work. To me, it felt as if he’d chosen work over me and over us. It was his way of coping but I couldn’t see this at the time. I thought he was being cold. I couldn’t understand it because he adored both our children, especially Colette – she was his princess, just as Doris Stokes had said. It was odd and out of character for him.

  Tony wasn’t a callous or hard-hearted man. In fact, he was the opposite – a total gentleman and fantastic father. But he was stifled at home and so withdrew into himself. People grieve in different ways, but Tony’s way was just another nail in my already broken heart.

  There were no photographs of Colette on the walls. I wanted to plaster the walls with her happy smiling image, but my husband couldn’t face it – it brought back the sharp pain of our loss. He couldn’t bear to be reminded.

  Tony had always been the quiet type. He was shy and unassuming. It was this that initially attracted me to him. We were total opposites of one another but that’s what made our marriage work. I’d always been the outgoing, bubbly one – the life and soul of the party. But now I’d assumed Tony’s role. I’d become shy and withdrawn. The ongoing murder investigation had also made me fearful and paranoid. I had the constant feeling that I was being watched and didn’t feel comfortable in my own home; a place that should have been my sanctuary became my prison without bars. I’d retreat into it but still I didn’t feel safe. Those crank phone calls had haunted me. Was someone watching? Was it Colette’s killer? Had I been the intended target, as one of the officers had suggested? But it didn’t make sense – why would someone pick me or my daughter out from the crowd, with the intention of murdering one of us?

  ‘Maybe Colette knew her killer?’ an officer suggested.

  I shook my head vehemently. ‘I know my daughter too well. If someone had freaked her out or worried her, then she would have told me about it.’

  But the police were thorough. They asked me all about Colette’s movements. I recalled her work experience as a nurse at Saxondale Hospital. It had been a mixed hospital, but it also housed a psychiatric unit.

  ‘And the school sent her on work experience there?’ said an astonished officer.

  ‘Yes, but I’m sure that the school would have done everything correctly and that Colette would never have been at any risk.’

  I insisted that the work experience had nothing to do with it, but the seed of doubt had been sown in my mind. What if Colette, in her desperate bid to become a nurse, had met someone there? Maybe she’d carried out a kind act or gesture for someone but her killer, in his twisted mind, had seen it as something more? My imagination raced with the possibilities.

  The police began checking out everyone that Colette had come into contact with.

  I didn’t know where this monster had come from but I was certain of one thing, that it was him watching me, taunting me and my family, playing with us as if we were part of some sick cat-and-mouse game.

  I imagined Colette’s murderer watching our house, waiting for me to leave it. Did he know that I was there alone and scared long after Tony had left for work? Did he live in the village? Had I passed him in the street before this nightmare and smiled innocently at him in a friendly morning greeting?

  The police dismissed my fears that Colette’s murderer lived in Keyworth, saying that, whoever it was, he’d be long gone by now. But I had this terrible feeling that he was still here and close by, watching and waiting. Nothing anyone could say to me could convince me otherwise. I knew in my heart of hearts that this evil sadistic bastard was hiding somewhere, enjoying every moment of our misery.

  ‘He’s here somewhere, Tony,’ I insisted. ‘I just know he is. I think he’s watching us; he’s watching me.’

  Tony was worried about me. To be honest, I was worried about myself, as I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about this. I couldn’t explain it, although everyone tried to convince me it was nonsense. I knew otherwise – a kind of sixth sense.

  Things became so bad that we had a burglar alarm fitted. I also asked the police if they could fit panic alarm buttons all over our house. In the end, an ex-police officer fitted them in the hallway and at the top of the stairs, just in case we heard an intruder in the middle of the night.

  But all the panic alarms in the world couldn’t stop the constant dreams and nightmares. There was one particular recurring dream that would haunt me in my sleep. It was so vivid that when I awoke I would be drenched in sweat as if I was in the middle of a fever. Yet I would also be able to recount it in all its full, gory detail.

  It always began with Tony and I searching for Colette, stricken with fear as we strode across a field in darkness looking for her and calling out her name. The cold would bite right through me, as it did on the night I searched for her with the police. Tony and I would desperately scour the darkness looking for an outline or blackened shape – anything like the shadow of a lost child.

  Suddenly, Tony would call out. He’d seen something lying by the side of a hedge bottom in the field. As we approached, the shape would become clearer – it was Colette, but she wasn’t dressed in her own clothes, instead she was naked and wearing my beloved lime-green raincoat. The very same coat I’d worn during the night search with the police. Without warning, I’d begin to scream, ‘Mackintosh, Mackintosh!’

  Then I would wake up. But I was never in bed.

  Instead, I would be standing at the top of the stairs on the landing, drenched in sweat, scared to death by the horror vision.

  My mum, who stayed with us to help me out, heard my screams and would come dashing to the bottom of the stairs still dressed in her nightclothes.

  ‘Tony,’ she would shout. ‘She’s done it again. My God, she’s going to fall. Catch her Tony; catch her before she falls…’

  Time after time, Tony would run from the bedroom, wrap his arms around me protectively and coax me back into bed. He was fantastic, he was my protector, but I could never sleep well after the first dream. It continued to haunt me as this scene was replayed in my mind like a sick film trailer time and time again.

  One day, exhausted from a lack of sleep, I told the police all about my recurring dream.

  Instead of dismissing me as some sort of lunatic, the officer listened intently. ‘Things like this have happened in the past in similar murder cases,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they have brought about significant information.’

  I was astonished.

  ‘It’s something we need to
look into,’ he added.

  Soon afterwards, the police began speaking to people who lived in the surrounding villages with the surname Mackintosh.

  Tony and I couldn’t seem to communicate any more. Instead, he would confide in Mark. I’d hear them whispering in the kitchen together. It made me feel even more paranoid and isolated. I later discovered that they were talking about things that had come up in the police investigation – things far too upsetting for me to hear in my present state. They did it to protect me, but I’d never felt so alone in my life.

  Alone and frightened, I’d sit on the chair in the hallway. It had become my favourite spot to watch and wait for Colette to return home. I’d look for her through the window but it was always someone else’s daughter walking by in the street, never Colette. Still I continued to sit there and live in hope.

  One day, Tony returned home from work to find me sitting in my usual spot watching and waiting. I must have cut a pathetic and pitiful sight. Up until this point, everyone had been so kind and careful not to hurt my feelings, but Tony knew that if I was to move on I had to snap out of it – it was for my own good. He’d had enough of seeing me there night after night and it broke his heart.

  ‘She’s not coming home, Jacqui, she’s gone,’ he told me gently. ‘Colette is dead, she’s never coming home. You’ve got to accept it.’

  But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t accept that I’d never see her again. I would sit there hoping that they had somehow got it wrong and that Colette would appear.

  ‘She’s not going to come home, Jacqui, she’s never going to come home,’ Tony insisted.

  But I wouldn’t believe it, not in the long months that had followed her death, not until we finally had her buried. It was only at this point that I finally accepted my little girl was never coming home. I’d needed to bury her to save my sanity.

  I’d visit Colette’s grave twice a week and place fresh white carnations on it. But the strange thing was that, long after I’d left the flowers behind on her grave, their pungent scent would drift along and follow me home. It would fill the hallway.

  In an act of kindness, the Godfreys, Russell’s family, commissioned a pastel picture of Colette while they were away in Spain. It was a lovely gesture and the picture had been taken from one of my favourite photographs of her, but there was something about it that left me on edge. We hung it in the hallway. Colette’s eyes seemed to follow you wherever you stood, even if you were going up or coming down the stairs.

  Then a scent of carnations began to hang heavily in the air. At first, I felt as if I was going mad. Was I just imagining it? Was my grief so overwhelming that I was beginning to imagine familiar smells linking me back to my daughter?

  My mum had long since left our home following the murder, but she would still pop by to help me out with household chores. One afternoon, I had to nip out and Mum offered to do a great big pile of ironing. She decided to position herself in the hallway as it was a large space and, with me gone, the house was empty. A few hours later, I returned to find Mum still ironing, but she had moved from the hall to the kitchen.

  ‘Why did you move?’ I asked her, knowing what her answer was.

  Mum didn’t reply. Instead, she looked uneasy and shrugged her shoulders as if everything was fine.

  ‘You sensed her, didn’t you? In the hallway?’ I said.

  Mum looked up and placed the iron heavily on the end of the board. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Was it the picture?’

  ‘I think so,’ she told me, ‘but I could also smell flowers – carnations.’

  I knew it. I wasn’t going mad!

  ‘I just sensed that she was there with me.’ Mum paused as if she was a little embarrassed to admit it. ‘I was frightened, Jacqui. I can’t explain it. It unnerved me, so I moved everything in here.’

  It wasn’t just Mum who sensed Colette. I always felt her with me in the hallway, first thing in the morning when I came downstairs and last thing at night as I walked up them to go to bed. She was still there with us. It brought me comfort.

  One day, Mark and I were sitting in the lounge watching TV when he turned to me. His face was ashen white.

  ‘Mum,’ he said urgently. ‘Colette’s here – I can sense her.’

  ‘I know, love,’ I replied. ‘So can I.’

  I could smell the scent of carnations again, but there were no flowers in the house.

  Other inexplicable things were happening too. One afternoon, Aunt May and my neighbour Jan were busy working in the salon. They’d given the customers cups of coffee. Once they were empty, the cups and saucers were placed on a long work surface at the side. Normally, Colette would have been there to clear, wash and put them away but they remained there for a little longer that day.

  Suddenly, there was an almighty clatter of china. Jan turned her head as she heard them break against the hard floor. Both cups had inexplicably lifted themselves off the side of the work surface. They crashed down to the ground, smashing to smithereens all over the floor.

  ‘I’m telling you, Jacqui,’ Jan confessed later, ‘no one was near the cups to knock them off. They just seemed to lift off all by themselves. It sounds odd, but we felt as if Colette was with us right there in the salon.’

  I nodded – I understood completely.

  The fact that Tony (along with most people, for that matter) hadn’t believed me about the crank phone calls until my friends happened to be there to witness one had driven a further wedge into our marriage. The trust between us had been broken so everything else slowly disintegrated from that moment on.

  Sexually, I couldn’t bear to have Tony near me. He used to give me a peck on the cheek every night before we went to bed, but now I couldn’t stand him touching me physically. All I could think was that sex was the reason my daughter had died. Colette had died for another man’s depraved lust. In my mind, even sex between a man and his wife wasn’t a natural and loving act any more – somehow it had become tainted by Colette’s death. I simply couldn’t bear it any more. As a result, the gap between Tony and me widened to the point that we were almost strangers living under the same roof. Soon, we stopped talking altogether.

  We operated like robots. Eventually, I returned to work at my aunt May’s salon. They’d held a position open for me for when I felt ready to return to work. I felt it was time to go back. I only worked a couple of days a week but it was good for me to escape from the house, my failing marriage and my negative thoughts.

  I was worried that clients would ask me about Colette but no one ever did. I didn’t cut hair at the salon. Instead, I took up Colette’s old position and covered the reception so my conversations with people were purposely kept short and brief. I would smile and make appointments and show them through, but I wouldn’t stand discussing my life with them. It was too painful. Often, the police would pop into the salon to see me, but I would take them into the staff room out the back. Clients would see us, but no one ever asked what was going on – I think they knew better than to pry.

  Working in the salon, I still had the sense that I was being watched all the time. It was an awful feeling. I felt so vulnerable – as if I was living in a goldfish bowl. Nothing seemed to make an awful lot of sense any more. One afternoon – in an event I would not find out about for many years to come – one of the young hairdressers was stopped outside the salon by a man. He asked her things about the people who worked inside, including our names. The girl was busy on her lunch break and had nipped over the road to a nearby shop. Her mind was occupied with grabbing her lunch so she thought nothing of the conversation. But, years later; she wondered whether it had been Colette’s killer, trying to ascertain if I was back there. We will never know now, but perhaps I was right that someone was watching me from the shadows.

  Even though I’d smile and greet clients from behind the salon reception, my smile was thin, tight and painted on. It was a false smile. I felt on show. How was I supposed to be? How was I supposed to act? Was
I playing a convincing part of the grieving mother or, by going back to work, did I somehow appear uncaring and hard-hearted?

  The police informed me that they had enlisted the help of special constables to aid in the murder inquiry. Soon, reports of conversations at various homes had filtered back to me through friends and clients and those working in the hairdressers.

  One day, a young special constable had been to a house which belonged to a friend of a friend of mine.

  ‘What about Jacqui Aram, eh?’ he’d said to her. ‘She’s supposed to be a bit of a girl, ain’t she?’

  I was mortified when I heard this. Was he trying to say I was some sort of loose woman? Wasn’t I suffering enough, without nasty unfounded comments like this? Maybe they were saying these things to provoke a reaction from the people they were speaking to – perhaps it was part of a bigger plan. But what reaction would a comment like that provoke? It only served to sully my good name and make me feel even more vulnerable.

  I didn’t lodge an official complaint but instead mentioned it to my family liaison officer Pete Pickering.

  ‘Why would he say such a thing, Pete?’ I asked. ‘What have I ever done for someone to say something like that about me?’

  Pete looked at me apologetically and shook his head. He couldn’t believe it either. The police had been fantastic. This was only one bad apple. But it had hurt me deeply.

  ‘I’ve lived for my kids and my husband. I’ve worked hard all my life. Sure, I’ve enjoyed the odd weekend out with my husband or we’ve gone out as a family, but what have I done to deserve this?’

  ‘I shouldn’t read too much into it, Jacqui,’ Pete explained. ‘They’ve drafted in a lot of specials for the door-to-door enquiries.’

  Some days, things became so bad that I would suffer panic attacks where I could barely leave the house. It was as if every breath was being drained from me by an invisible force. Other days I wanted to run round and scream like a lunatic at the injustice of it all – I just wanted my family back. I felt bereft, like I’d lost everything. I wanted Colette here in my arms, and for Tony and me to be as happy as we were before all of this. The sad thing was that I knew deep down it would never happen. Instead, things were slowly getting worse. Tony and I would kiss each other goodbye when we left for work but we were just going through the motions – our marriage had become a sham. We were merely keeping up appearances. Financially, things became difficult for us after Colette’s death. In short, we were struggling in more ways than one.