Angel of Death

by John Askill

  ‘We used to have a laugh with the boys, but none of them would dare to tease Bev about her weight. I got the feeling they were actually a bit frightened of her. Most of the boys were smaller than her. Bev could always take care of herself. She wouldn’t want to get into fights, she would always back off, but you got the impression she could handle herself.’

  School headmaster John Gleeson remembers her dreams of wanting to become a nurse and her joy when she finally made it.

  As he recalls: ‘She was always on the chubby side, but a helpful, pleasant girl. It’s a small school with around 240 pupils. We don’t have the problems that exist in inner cities. We try to develop a warm atmosphere and, by and large, the children respond. Beverley was above average as a pupil and she did particularly well in home economics which dealt with child development and nursing, among other things. Nursing was always her chosen path and it really was no surprise when she left school and started a pre-nursing course at Grantham college.’

  She had always been so pleasant, responsible and determined to realise her ambition. She left school in June 1985 with seven CSEs: French, English language, English literature, maths, biology, history and home economics. Her marks in home economics were so good she was awarded an O level pass.

  Rachel became a regular visitor to her friend’s home, which she remembers as a warm, loving environment, although Beverley would sometimes argue with her two sisters who shared her bedroom. The two friends would go babysitting together and Rachel noticed how Beverley was delighted when the baby woke up, seeing it as a bonus, a chance to cuddle and to play. ‘When you’re babysitting all you want is for the baby to stay asleep, but Bev loved them to wake up. It never bothered her, she had so much patience with kids, and she always got them back to sleep. She used to babysit for the Latters, the Warburtons and Sue Binner, who lived across from the Fighting Cocks. She wasn’t that interested in making money out of it, it was more the opportunity to be with kids.’

  In her spare time teenager Beverley worked at the village store or served bar meals at the pub to earn a few extra pounds. She had also become an accomplished pool player, capable of beating many of the lads at the Fighting Cocks; she could also play a mean game of darts.

  Rachel had wanted to join the RAF to train as an air-traffic controller, but she failed the entrance exam. While she waited to re-sit the test she joined Beverley at Grantham college, travelling back and forth by bus each morning and night. It was there that Rachel met her future husband and when they married at Edenham parish church, just a few miles from Corby Glen, on 4 July 1987, Beverley made the day memorable by abandoning her baggy jumpers and jeans, and wearing a dress.

  Eighteen-year-old Rachel moved to Scotland but returned frequently to Corby Glen. When baby son Garry was born Beverley fussed over him like an aunt. ‘She always gave Garry a lot of attention when I went back to Corby Glen,’ said Rachel. ‘She would send me cardigans for him.’ The girls lost touch but then, in September 1990, they met by chance when Rachel’s sister gave birth at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital. The baby arrived prematurely and was in the special baby care unit. Beverley was there to see a fellow nurse who had given birth to twins. She was working on the Children’s Ward by then and was delighted to see Rachel.

  ‘I said she had done well getting the job she wanted. She asked where I was living and hadn’t realised I had moved back to Grantham with my husband. We chatted, it was good to see her again.’

  Beverley had to wait for her dream to come true. When her college course finished there had been no vacancies for student nurses at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital; Beverley joined many of her friends on the dole. She hated being out of work, living on her Giro from the state, and she had to wait six months before she got the news that a job was finally hers. It was a moment to treasure and Beverley, by now eighteen, threw herself into her new life on the wards.

  Her first decision was to leave Corby Glen and move into the nurses’ home across the road from the hospital.

  She trained as a student nurse for three years, studying whenever she got the chance. All that mattered was qualifying as a State Enrolled Nurse, and working with children.

  Then, in mid-February 1991, she went for an interview at the Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, thirty miles from Grantham. She was in the process of finishing her training and had been working for the last six months on the Children’s Ward at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital. The Pilgrim Hospital was her big chance. But she was turned down for the job. She was told the reason she was being rejected was because she simply did not have enough experience treating very sick children.

  The news was devastating. Allitt returned to Grantham wondering what the future held. The authorities at Grantham came to her rescue. They had been advertising for a staff nurse and hadn’t received a single application, so they offered her a short-term contract for six months.

  It was a stop gap, an opportunity to gain the experience she needed to reapply for the job at Boston.

  She had six months to prove what she could do, to show she could cope.

  10. Steve — Her One True Love

  Allitt’s decision to move from her home village of Corby Glen to near the hospital in Grantham came as a blow to boyfriend Steve Biggs, the first and only real love of her life.

  She was dumpy, plain and overweight, never bothered to wear make-up, not the kind of girl to turn heads in Corby Glen. But Steve Biggs had been besotted from the night they’d first met in the bar of the Fighting Cocks in September 1987. She was drinking halves of lager with a girlfriend, dressed as always in jeans and a baggy sweat-shirt and, when he challenged her to a game of pool, she’d beaten him fair and square.

  It was to be the first of many defeats for the shy, quietly spoken roadworker during a love affair in which he became totally dominated by Allitt’s overwhelming strength of personality. Their battles and occasional sexual encounters were to last two and a half years – a strange, almost unreal relationship even when they got engaged and began to talk of marriage.

  Steve remembers how Allitt would bully him, sometimes attacking him with her fists, or even kneeing him in the groin, leaving him crying and rolling in agony on the floor. She grumbled about their love-making and twice, when they went away on holiday, she refused to share his bed, sleeping instead in a separate room with a girlfriend.

  When she began openly to walk hand in hand in public with another girl, Steve began to worry that his girlfriend might be more interested in women than men. He became so concerned that, at one point, he finally plucked up the courage to ask Allitt: ‘Are you a lesbian?’ She totally denied it and insisted it had been ‘just a joke’.

  When he met Allitt she was still just seventeen, and he was eighteen, a new arrival in the village. He had been instantly swept off his feet.

  Anxious to make new friends, and weary of sitting at home night after night in front of the TV, Steve had begun to visit the Fighting Cocks after work. When he spotted Allitt in the bar one of the regulars said she was a ‘nice, quiet girl’. They played pool and began meeting at the pub.

  At that time, Allitt had completed her pre-nursing course at Grantham college and was on the dole, waiting for an interview at the hospital. She was trying to fill her time babysitting and visiting friends in the village, but she was desperately bored and eager to start work.

  ‘She hated not having much money but, for all that, she seemed happy and she used to laugh a lot. I thought she was a nice girl, very friendly and chirpy. She was good company.’

  Steve found that romance with Allitt was a frustrating experience. She refused to let him walk her home right to her door, and always insisted he left her at the top of the road. Steve thought it was odd, but then the whole relationship would be peculiar.

  Steve was very much the village boy. There had never been much excitement and drama in his life. His romantic encounters were limited to a brief and painful affair with a girl in the nearby town of Bourne where he had gone to seco
ndary school. Steve was a beginner when it came to sex. Beverley Allitt, too, had no experience in the art of love. But, as they walked home one night from the Fighting Cocks, she concocted a fanciful tale that was designed to fill him with pity. At the time Steve had no idea that it was a lie aimed at winning his sympathy.

  A year or so earlier Allitt had met one of Steve’s former classmates from Bourne School. One of her pals had been going steady and persuaded her boyfriend to bring along Kevin Fowler for Beverley. Steve remembered the name from their days together at school. He had always disliked Fowler and recalled, as Allitt told the story, how they had once come to blows. He listened in astonishment as his girlfriend described her brief fling with Fowler.

  They had been out together in a foursome a couple of times, enjoyed a few drinks at the pub but it hadn’t been a serious relationship. They had just been friends – no more than that. But Allitt claimed it had ended in terrifying fashion with Fowler trying to rape her. She told Steve they were walking home when Kevin slipped behind a tree to spend a penny.

  The next thing she knew he was holding her at knifepoint ‘trying to get his way’. Allitt told the story in a matter-of-fact kind of way. She had managed to struggle free and get away, but she had never told her parents for fear of their reaction. Allitt claimed that Kevin had returned to Corby Glen and followed her home from the Fighting Cocks. She had been so alarmed, she told Steve, that she had asked the landlord and one of the regulars – a man with plenty of muscle – to escort her home.

  Steve felt so sorry for his new girl. How could anyone do such a thing? It never crossed his mind that Allitt had made up the whole wretched story. Several years later he finally discovered the truth.

  Kevin Fowler had long forgotten his brief encounter with Beverley Allitt.

  He had been a boy of seventeen when they had twice been out together drinking in a foursome. Now, six years later, he read in the paper that she had been charged with murdering four children at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital. It was hard to believe because Allitt had seemed ‘such an ordinary girl, plain, and a bit dull’.

  Their relationship had fizzled out before it had even started. They had never kissed or held one another, but suddenly Kevin began to hear talk that Allitt claimed he had tried to rape her.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard what she’d been saying. She had been putting it round that I had been walking her home, gone behind a tree for a widdle, come at her from behind with a knife, and tried to rape her. She was supposed to have fought me off.

  ‘At first I was upset and went to see a solicitor. I couldn’t understand why anyone could make up such a lie. I have never owned a knife, never mind used one to attack a girl. I have always had my share of the girls without that kind of thing. I wouldn’t mind if it had been a great big love affair, but we only went out a couple of times for a drink. We’d meet in a foursome at 8pm. We’d have a few drinks at the pub in Corby Glen, and me and my mate would leave Bev and her pal at around 11pm.

  ‘I can only think she made up the story to make people feel sorry for her. She must have a screw loose to do something like that.’

  Allitt celebrated her eighteenth birthday on 4 October and Steve spent £15 buying her a Sad Sam, a floppy-eared toy dog, to add to the collection she had at home. He had expected a show of affection but, again, her reaction had been to smile and turn away. Steve recalls: ‘She didn’t even give me a kiss when I handed her the present.’ It was three months before Steve was allowed to meet his girlfriend’s family.

  ‘When I finally got introduced to them we got on great. Her dad was a real joker, always going on about lazy roadworkers and how we used to go round digging holes, then filling them in again. They made me feel so welcome I sometimes would stay for my dinner and tea on a Sunday. Donna, Bev’s older sister, lived in Grantham; Alison her younger sister was still at home. Darren, her brother, was only fourteen and they were smashing people.’

  Their first few weeks and months together were nearly always happy and it wasn’t long before Steve began to suspect he was falling in love.

  ‘Bev used to laugh a lot, we’d do daft things together and really enjoy it. One night it had been raining really heavy and we went out in a foursome in my car. There’s a country lane not far from Corby Glen, where you have to ford a stream, and this night it was like a river. I just put my foot down, the water was deeper than the car and we started floating.

  ‘There was water pouring in through the doors. All we could do was drift to the other bank. It was hilarious, we were all in fits, Bev included.’

  Even though they had been going steady only a few short months Steve wondered if the relationship might lead to marriage. But, in the event, it was Allitt who popped the question as they walked through Corby Glen on their way to meet friends for a night out. She suddenly stopped, turned to Steve and asked him bluntly: ‘Do you fancy getting married?’

  Steve was taken aback – the question had come out of the blue – but, instinctively, he said ‘Yes’ straight away. Then he listened as Allitt laid down her terms and conditions. There was no hurry to hold the wedding. Allitt announced they would get married in two or three years time when they’d saved up enough money to settle down.

  Steve was jubilant and couldn’t wait to present his fiancée with a ring as a token of his love. He went to Grantham and spent £40 at the Argos catalogue store buying Beverley a gold band for her engagement finger. Steve’s mother was so delighted she threw a little party to celebrate.

  Allitt began collecting household possessions for her bottom drawer and bought a pretty set of flowered crockery called Eternal Beau in readiness for the day when they would be together.

  She was the dominant partner, she nearly always got her own way but, when she crashed her fiancé’s Ford Escort, the accident was to cause Steve to question her honesty for the first time.

  ‘She didn’t have a licence, I knew I was risking it when she asked me if she could drive. We were on the back roads, it was 8pm at night and I had said OK. But she went round a corner too fast, skidded and crashed into a tree. The car was only just driveable. The front end was so badly damaged I had to scrap it.

  ‘I gave Bev a hug and said: “Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t see any reason to lie about it, but she said I had got to tell her dad I’d been driving. She also suggested that we say it had happened near Corby Glen when really we’d been miles and miles away near Stamford. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t tell the truth to her family.’

  Soon Steve discovered Allitt’s love of children; she would take him babysitting.

  ‘She was really keen to get a nursing job. She said she liked looking after children, she loved them and wanted to go into child nursing. I remember going babysitting one night and this little girl, about nine months old, woke up crying. Bev went upstairs, got her back to sleep and she didn’t panic one bit. She told me she wanted a couple of kids of her own when she was ready.’

  Steve was by now discovering that his fiancée had no appetite for making love. He had hoped it would be a passionate affair, but it was not to be. In two and a half years together they would never share the same bed, and their sexual encounters were brief and unhappy. They would make love at her home when her parents were out, normally about once a month and sometimes not as often as that.

  Steve said: ‘I decided that Bev didn’t like sex much at all. Bev never took her clothes off in front of me. I don’t suppose you can call what happened making love. We had sex and there’s a difference. When Bev said it was over, then it was over and she used to tell me to stop. She would make me stop and I just took it because I was in love. Each time it only lasted five minutes at the most. She would normally say: “Get off – you’re hurting me.”’

  But Steve remained besotted and was content to let Allitt lay down the rules.

  ‘One month we had sex three times at her house. It was a record for us. The earth didn’t exactly move but I thought it was an honour to have
sex with her. Even so, she never really gave much of herself to me.’

  What was to bring a huge smile to her face, however, was the moment she finally won the promise of a job interview at Grantham Hospital at the beginning of 1988. She wasn’t nervous at the prospect, just excited and totally confident the job would be hers.

  When the news came that she was successful Allitt was thrilled. But Steve found it hard to share her joy when she told him she intended to leave Corby Glen and move into the nurses’ home across the road from the hospital to avoid having to travel sixteen miles a day to Grantham and back. Heartbroken by the announcement Steve recalls: ‘We’d been seeing each other every single day and I was really upset at the thought of us only meeting at the weekends. But I was head over heels in love so I said OK.’

  Allitt passed her driving test not long after starting work at the hospital and Steve, anxious to do anything for his fiancée, agreed she could borrow his car to drive there each week.

  He had spent £1000 replacing the Escort she had written off with an eyecatching silver-and-red Vauxhall Chevette; Allitt’s grandfather had loaned him most of the money.

  Their weekends together were often stormy and they quarrelled when Allitt spent hours with her head stuck inside medical textbooks studying for her exams.

  Allitt wouldn’t give Steve her telephone number at the nurses’ home so he could call her during the week. In the end he would give her £5 worth of 10p pieces each week in the hope that she would call him. ‘Sometimes she wouldn’t bother, even though I’d given her the money, and I’d just sit there by the phone waiting and waiting.’

  He couldn’t understand either why Allitt also refused to let him hold her hand when they were out together in public. Steve was hurt, tortured by the fear that she might be ashamed of their love. He wanted the world to know how much he felt about Bev. Why didn’t she feel the same? It was becoming a bleak existence for the bewildered village boy as he endured nights of loneliness and weekends of arguments and violence with his fiancée.