Читать книгу Pure Evil - How Tracie Andrews murdered my son, decieved the nation and sentenced me to a life of pain and misery - Maureen Harvey - Страница 8

Once Ray, Alan, Babs and I were alone, we agreed Ray and I would get dressed while Alan began phoning the family. I still don’t know to this day how Alan managed to keep it all together. He and Babs had already been through so much after losing Spencer and yet they were fantastic.

Ray and I had been there for them then but we hadn’t ever imagined the enormity of their pain, how they’d felt, what they’d suffered. I don’t think Ray and I will ever be able to thank them for the love and support they gave us in those first devastating hours. We’d never have coped without them.

We were in such a state that I don’t think it would have occurred to us that we’d need to start letting everyone know in our family. Apart from Michelle and Steve and Alan and Babs, the only person we wanted to speak to was Tracie.

As far as we were concerned, she had all the answers.

‘Well, we just can’t sit here drinking bloody tea,’ I told Babs. ‘I’m going to try and get hold of Tracie.’

There was no answer from her flat so I phoned her mum Irene’s house. Tracie’s stepdad Alan Carter, Irene’s second husband, picked up the phone.

‘She’s too upset to speak to anyone, Maureen,’ he told me when I asked if I could talk to her. ‘And she’s tired, she’s had no sleep. The police took her from the hospital at one o’clock this morning to Redditch Police Station to make a statement. Can you ring back later?’

I could feel the anger rising. ‘Why didn’t she ring us from the hospital, Alan?’

There was a silence. ‘She couldn’t remember your number,’ he replied. ‘Ring back later.’

When I told Ray, Alan and Babs what he’d said, Ray exploded. We’d sat up all night waiting for answers and all Alan could tell us was that she was upset.

‘What does he mean, she couldn’t remember our bloody number?’ spat Ray. ‘She’s never had any trouble remembering it before.’

Ray was right. Every time Tracie and Lee had a row and split up, she’d be on the phone asking to speak to him within hours. It didn’t matter how many times we told her that Lee was out or that he didn’t want to talk to her, she’d still keep phoning, screaming down the phone that she knew he was there.

However far-fetched her excuse about not contacting us seemed, I was still determined to defend Tracie. ‘Maybe the police wanted to tell us,’ I suggested. ‘If they’ve been questioning her, she probably didn’t get the chance to phone us, Ray.’

I was too upset and exhausted to listen to him putting two and two together and getting five when none of us knew the facts. Besides which, Ray had drunk three or four large brandies by then, a drink he never normally touched, and was so distraught that I knew it was pointless to offer any rational suggestions about why she hadn’t phoned.

Staring back at my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I splashed water on my face and cleaned my teeth, things made even less sense. With so many unanswered questions whirling around in my head and the thought of how I’d break the news to Michelle, I felt completely lost and utterly confused. It seemed like a lifetime ago since Ray and I had almost fallen down the stairs to open the front door and yet, as I went into the bedroom to change out of my nightie, it seemed like it had only just happened.

I put on the jeans and top I’d been wearing the night before, raked my fingers through my hair and went downstairs. As Ray went to change, I rang the police. Whatever they were going to tell me, I’d decided I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I didn’t care how long I had to wait around in some police station, I had to see Lee. They told me they were planning to bring Tracie back to the police station for further questioning but that we could come to the hospital and identify Lee’s body.

Only a parent who has gone through the overwhelming pain and anguish of having to look at the lifeless body of their child will understand how Ray and I felt that day. It is the most devastating and unbearable ordeal that a human being can ever face. Something that, as a mum or dad, you never imagine having to go through. Shocking, numbing, heartbreaking.

Anyone whose child has been murdered knows that a light goes out from the moment you are told, but the sickening sense of loss and overwhelming sorrow comes with the actual moment you see them. Whatever fragile hope you may have held on to, any flicker of hope that it just might not be your child disappears as you stand in the mortuary and realise that they are never coming back. That you are never again going to see their smile, hear their voice, their laughter.

The police had again told us that Lee had sustained a number of knife wounds so we had no idea what to expect. Ray was shaking so much he could hardly walk as we went into the mortuary with Alan and our police liaison officer DS Mick O’Donnell. Not knowing what to expect when we saw Lee was obviously affecting him badly, whereas I just wanted to hold our son in my arms.

Within a few minutes of getting into the room, Ray was in such a terrible state that he had to leave. I thought he was going to collapse as I watched him stroke Lee’s face. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t cope,’ he said, rushing to the door.

I was crying as I heard Ray retching and sobbing outside in the corridor. It’s a memory I will never be able to forget, like the image of pain in Alan’s face as he stood next to me and Babs gazing at Lee.

I looked at my beautiful boy as the tears rolled down my face, hardly able to comprehend how perfect he looked. Apart from three plasters on his face, on his forehead, cheek and chin, there was no sign of the brutality that had ended his life, no blood, no bruising. He looked as though he was asleep.

I kissed him gently all over his face and stroked his cheek and hair. I couldn’t believe how cold he was. Cold and still. ‘Don’t worry, Lee,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to find who did this to you, Bab.’ ‘Bab’ was what I’d always affectionately called Lee; it’s a Brummie term of endearment used for someone close.

Feeling the loss and horror when I looked at him, I thought about the past. When he was only four or five, one of his friends had hit Lee in the face after they had fallen out over something. Ray had seen it happen and had told Lee to hit the boy back, to stand up for himself. But Lee didn’t want to and he wouldn’t! His dad wanted him to defend himself, but it just wasn’t in Lee’s nature to be violent; he would shout to get his point across but avoided confrontation.

I lost all sense of time and reality in the moments that I spent with him that first time. It was shocking and, looking back, I don’t think I’d have coped as well as I did if I hadn’t seen my mum and dad after they died.

Ray’s dad had died when he was only eight months old, but, when his mum died of cancer at the age of 63, he didn’t want to go and see her. I made him go because I thought he’d regret it. And I’d seen my cousin (my dad’s sister Beatrice’s son). He’d died, aged 17, with his 16-year-old girlfriend in a motorbike accident and, although I’d been quite young at the time of the funeral, I remembered my dad taking me to my auntie Queen’s house to see him in his coffin. I was frightened but Auntie Queen had put her arm around me. ‘The dead won’t hurt you, Maureen,’ she’d said. ‘It’s nice to kiss their head or their hand. If you kiss them goodbye, they never come back to haunt you.’

Auntie Queen was the psychic in our family. Maybe it was losing her son, but she definitely had what you’d call a second sight. She’d turned around when Lee had only been about three or four and said, ‘You’ve got to watch your boys.’

It was a strange thing to say but I’ve never forgotten it. There were five boys in our family. Auntie Queen’s son Christopher died when he was 17; Alan and Babs had lost Spencer; and Ray’s brother and his sister had both lost their sons – Raymond, 20, and Alan, who was only 29.

Now we’d lost Lee. On a Sunday – the same day that all the other boys, except Spencer, had died.

I must have stayed with him that first time for about 15 minutes. The shock was still all-consuming but, after the first few minutes, I felt an extraordinary sense of calm and peace. Of course, I knew he was dead but it didn’t stop me wishing, hoping even, that he’d open his eyes and smile at me.

What in God’s name was I going to say to Michelle? How I was going to tell her that the brother she loved had been murdered? I just wanted her to come home so that I could hold her in my arms. She’d only married Steve seven months earlier in May 1996 and they were expecting a little brother or sister for Paige. The thought of how suddenly being caught up in this nightmare might affect Michelle’s pregnancy was heartbreaking.

The female mortuary attendant was lovely. So kind and calm. She asked me if I was feeling OK.

‘I can’t stop crying,’ I said.

The physical pain of seeing Lee was by now making me clutch my chest and fight to steady my breathing. I felt sick to the stomach. It seemed unreal that I would never see him. Hold him in my arms or breathe in the fragrance of his freshly washed hair. Watch him scoop up Danielle in his arms and swing her round. One of my last memories of Lee had been of him dancing to loud music as he was trying to shave and eat a sandwich at the same time. There never seemed to be enough time in the day for him. Perhaps he’d known he didn’t have long in this life.

Lost in grief, images of Lee flashing through my mind, I flinched as the attendant put her arm around me. ‘It’s natural to cry,’ she said. ‘Have the police told you anything about his injuries?’

‘Just that he’d been stabbed,’ I said, unable to take my eyes from Lee’s body.

‘He has 42 stab wounds,’ she said. ‘There are about 30 wounds around his neck and chest. And there’s one in his back. The small cuts on his fingers would suggest he’s tried to defend himself. The fatal wound was the one that severed his carotid artery in his neck. He would have lost a great deal of blood.’

I was shaking from head to toe as I listened to her. Whoever had done this to Lee had used the knife in such a frenzy that he hadn’t stood a chance. And, if he’d been stabbed in the back, had he been walking away from whoever had attacked him, not realising perhaps they had a knife?

Still shaking, I nodded when she asked me if I’d like to take a break and let her lead me back into the corridor where Ray was sitting.

‘I’m sorry, Maureen,’ he sobbed. ‘I couldn’t stay in there. I just can’t do this.’

Sitting next to Ray, I couldn’t find the words to tell him that I understood or that it was all right. I just couldn’t believe this was happening to us, let alone take in the reality that Lee was lying dead in the next room.

I didn’t want to leave the hospital. I just wanted to be with Lee. After a few minutes, I asked if I could go in and see him again on my own.

Back in the mortuary, I touched his face again, still surprised by how cold he felt. And then I lifted up the sheet that was covering him. I wanted to see what had happened to him but he was swathed up to the neck in white bandage. Probably from the post mortem. I couldn’t bear the thought that he’d had to go through that. I wanted to hold his hand but placed the sheet gently back over him. I was thinking, You can’t go there, he deserves his dignity.

I could have stayed there, just looking at him and talking to him. Looking back, as I so often do, it was probably the closest I’d felt to Lee since being told about his death. The physical pain of just wanting to take him in my arms and breathe the life back into him was overwhelming. Those who have gone through this will know how unbelievably shocking it is to sit with your child who you have known, loved and cared for since the day they were born and try to comprehend the idea that they are never coming back. I think that, no matter how long you sit there, it’s never long enough. You just don’t want to leave them.

‘I can’t leave him here alone,’ I whispered to the attendant. ‘He needs his mum. I love him so much. Please let me stay here with him.’

The attendant nodded and touched my arm. ‘Maureen, you can come back and see Lee any time you want to,’ she said. ‘And you can stay with him as long as you like.’

It was just what I needed to hear. The thought of being able to see him again was enough to help me out of the room and go back to Ray. Alan took over after that. He’d gone through the same grim procedure with his own son. He knew what Ray and I were going through. We couldn’t have gone through all the formalities of signing the identification documents without him.

As we left the hospital to go to Michelle’s, I was praying she hadn’t heard anything about Lee’s death on the car radio. She usually listened to nursery rhyme cassettes with Paige, singing along to all the words as they drove along. Please, God, she and Steve had been singing and not listening to the news.

The police had assured us that they wouldn’t release any details until we’d had a chance to break the news to her and Steve, but I couldn’t rest while there was still an outside chance they’d find out.

I phoned Kim, one of the girls who helped out in the hairdressing salon in King’s Heath that Michelle and I owned, and broke the news to her. I couldn’t risk Michelle trying to get hold of me there and then worrying because I hadn’t turned up for work.

Even though it was a busy time with customers booking appointments to go out to Christmas parties, work was the last thing on my mind.

She was brilliant and said she’d hold the fort and do anything I needed. If Michelle rang, she’d tell her I’d taken the day off.

It was a good move because, when we got to her house, Michelle had already phoned the salon and was wondering where I’d got to. Days off were never on my agenda, especially when she knew how busy we’d be at that time of the year. Seeing me and her dad with Alan and Babs getting out of the car, I knew by the look on her face that she realised something was wrong.

‘You don’t have to come in with us,’ I told Babs as she closed the car door. ‘This must be so painful for you after what you’ve been through with Spencer.

Babs squeezed my arm as I followed Ray up the path. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘We’re dealing with it.’

Michelle’s screams were deafening as I told her about Lee. She stood in her kitchen, banging her fist on the sink unit. ‘That fucking bitch did this!’ she screamed. ‘She’s killed Lee!’

Like Ray, Michelle was immediately in no doubt about the identity of Lee’s killer. Ray hadn’t said Tracie’s name but, as he stood crying in Michelle’s kitchen, I knew he was thinking the same thing.

‘Oh, God, Michelle, don’t, please,’ I said. I knew she was only saying what Ray had thought from the moment the police had arrived at our house, but I didn’t want to believe it. I took Michelle in my arms as Steve tried to comfort Paige, a sobbing little girl unable to understand her mum’s grief.

Michelle said that the night before she had suffered a massive panic attack. Sweating profusely and unable to get her breath, she described having experienced severe stabbing pains in her chest and acute breathlessness. It had been so bad she’d had to go outside to get air and Steve had been so worried he’d thought she was having a heart-attack. The astonishing thing for all of us was that it had happened at around 10.30–10.45pm, the time when Lee had taken his last breath.

The hugs and tears never stopped that day. And, even when we took Michelle and Steve back to the hospital to see Lee, the reality of his death still really didn’t sink in.

That same afternoon, we visited the police incident room at Redditch Police Station. Mick offered to take us because, even though he couldn’t tell us very much, he knew we weren’t going to sit at home, drinking endless cups of tea. I’ve never been the type to take ‘no’ for an answer and, well, I guess, with me being me, I didn’t care what I said or who I said it to. We needed to know anything they could tell us. And, like anyone who’s gone through this, you need to feel as though you’re doing something.

I’d seen plenty of incident rooms on the telly but had never imagined that I’d end up in one in real life. And never in a million years, in one set up to investigate the murder of my own son.

It was scary because it took us all back to the horror of being told about Lee and because nothing was hidden from us. It was just like the ones you see on The Bill – police officers sitting behind computers, desks covered with files and paper, telephones and a huge white board on the wall covered with photos of Lee’s body, his car and views of Cooper’s Hill. Even the photo I’d given to the policeman and woman who’d told us about Lee’s death was pinned up. It was one I’d taken of Tracie and Lee. Ray and I had been for a meal with them at a local pub and I’d decided to capture the moment.

In the days, weeks and months that followed Lee’s death, it became a signature photo accompanying reports of his murder.

‘All we want is for you to be honest with us,’ I told Mick as we left. ‘Anything you can tell us, anything at all.’

He nodded. ‘Leave it to us,’ he said. ‘There’s more information coming in all the time. You need to go home and try and get some rest if you can. We’ll come back with you and help you deal with the media. You and Ray will need to come back and give statements so you can’t say anything to any reporters.’

It was a lot easier said than done. When we got back home, the street was full of cars and vans – reporters, photographers and camera crews who had picked up the news of Lee’s murder on the West Mercia Police crime log that afternoon were camped outside our house. Like us, they had been given the barest details based on what Tracie had told the police. At that stage, all anyone had to go on was what the police had told us when they’d come to the house: that they had been chased by two men in a car on their way from a pub. And, when Lee stopped his car and got out to challenge them, he’d been attacked and killed by one of them.

Like the police, we knew the media had a job to do and that the coverage of Lee’s murder was going to be a vital part of helping with the investigation, but we still weren’t prepared for the relentless door-knocking and interview requests that continued throughout the day. Having seen so many fleeting images of distraught, grieving faces in the media over the years, and never really understanding what any of those bereaved relatives were going through, it was now our turn in the spotlight… we now had our own tragic story to tell, and desperately needed whatever help we could get.