The Black Widow

by Linda Calvey

  “Where do we go?” I said, standing up, downing the last dregs of the brandy, and wiping away the smudges of mascara and kohl that had run down my face. I must’ve looked a state, but as the only person I liked to look good in front of was now lying on a mortuary slab, I didn’t care a jot.

  “I’ll take ya. Can’t ’ave you goin’ there alone,” Terry said. “Just give me a minute.”

  Out on that empty London street, the frost lay heavy on the winter streets. It sparkled in the early morning light like diamonds, hard and cruel. It was bitterly cold but I barely noticed it. Sylvie left at the same time to get back to her pub. I squeezed her arm with gratitude, knowing that she’d known since last night, and she too had tried to protect me from the terrible truth.

  Deep down, I’d known something was wrong, and my anger at Mickey last night was part of my survival mechanism, keeping me going when at heart I knew something awful must’ve happened. It was too late for regret. I had to pull myself together, for my children and for Mickey, and do what I needed to do. Mickey’s mum had howled like a wounded animal when she was told the awful truth, that one of her sons was dead. None of us would escape from this unscathed.

  Terry and I arrived at the mortuary in South London. It was as desperate a place as I’d imagined. I was dazed but determined to get through the morning until I could hide away and vent my sadness, the grief that threatened to swallow me whole.

  “Where is he?” I asked the police officer who stood guard just by the mortuary entrance.

  “D’you mean Mickey Calvey?” he replied. He can’t have been much older than 30 – a mere boy really.

  “Yes, my Mickey. Where is he, please?” I replied with as much dignity as I could muster. Even though I was standing there, in the mortuary, waiting to be led to where my dead husband lay, I still couldn’t believe it was all really happening. It felt surreal, like a tragic joke, and nothing could burst the bubble I felt I was living inside.

  “Come this way,” the copper said. He showed us the room where Mickey was being kept. It was bare, with grey walls and linoleum on the floor. I baulked at the sight of it, even though I was only being allowed to look through the glass window, almost turning around and running away, gripped by a sudden urge to flee, to deny this was happening.

  “Come on, Lin, you can do this, girl,” Terry whispered.

  The next thing I knew, there was an armed police officer standing next to me.

  “I’m very sorry about your husband,” he said. He looked older.

  I stared at him blankly.

  Then another man appeared, wheeling a trolley. On the trolley was a body covered by a white sheet. I swallowed. Could I do this? My world was about to crumble, but I had to stay calm so I could identify my sweetheart on that slab.

  The man pulled back the cover. It was Mickey alright. I could tell, even though they weren’t letting me get any closer to him. Thankfully his face was unchanged. He looked like he was sleeping, but his face was ashen grey, his body stiff as a board under those bare strip lights.

  All my romantic hopes and dreams died that day. The man of my life, my soulmate and love of my life, was dead. There was no coming back from that. I burst into tears.

  The man started to talk, seemingly oblivious to my distress. A document on a clipboard had been thrust into my hands as we arrived at the place where Mickey was being held, but I hadn’t even glanced at it. The man talked and talked but I heard nothing until he said this.

  “…I’m sorry, but your husband left us no choice. He faced the officer and said, ‘It’s me or you,’ so he was shot through the front of his body.”

  “He said what?” I started as if from a nightmare. “What did you say?” At that point, the words suddenly made it through the fog of grief that had settled onto me. “Will you say that again, please?” I asked.

  The man repeated it, and I interjected, “That’s not true. I know that Mickey had no real bullets in his gun, just cotton wool in the cartridges, so he would never have faced up someone with a real gun and real bullets.” I spoke slowly, as the cogs in my brain started to work.

  I knew that this didn’t sound right. Mickey was many things – reckless, charming, a crook – but he wasn’t ever stupid. Why would he confront an officer carrying live bullets, with nothing but fluff to defend himself with? That would’ve been madness. Mickey had a cool head under fire, and on the raids. He’d proved himself over and over again. It was the reason he was always the anchor man: his pals knew that he wouldn’t panic, that he would stay steady while alarm bells rang, staff screamed and sirens wailed, making sure everyone got out and away from whatever job they were doing.

  There was no way he’d ever react like that. I knew it in my heart.

  “Just sign the paper, will you, and we can release the body to you,” the man said.

  I looked over at him, barely registering him, and threw the clipboard on the floor.

  “No, I won’t sign the papers. Something’s not right, I know it. I’m not signing anythin’ until I know what really went on yesterday,” I said calmly.

  The man, glancing over at his armed colleague with a look of exasperation, repeated what he’d said. “Mrs Calvey, the officer had no choice but to shoot him. Mickey faced the officer and said, ‘It’s me or you’.”

  I turned on him. “That’s a lie.”

  The man looked uncomfortable. He picked up the papers. “Sign this, Mrs Calvey, and you can go. We’ve done the post-mortem, so you can take him.”

  I scanned the pages. “It says here that my Mickey was shot through the front. Well, I think you’re lying. I know he wouldn’t confront a copper, so that doesn’t sound right to me either. That wasn’t how it happened, and I’m goin’ to find out what really took place. I won’t sign anything. I want a second opinion.”

  By now, even Terry was getting frustrated with me. He wanted to leave – I understood that. The sight of his brother on the slab must’ve been as upsetting for him as it was for me.

  “Come on Lin, sign and we can go,” Terry pleaded. But I wouldn’t budge.

  Something was being covered up. I knew that Mickey always laughed at my instincts, but time and time again they’d been proven right. This was one of those times – I was as sure of it as I had been of anything in my life.

  “I will not sign this. We’ll have our own autopsy, and that’s my final word.” I felt my strength begin to return, the fog in my brain clearing, if just for those few vital moments. “If I sign this, Mickey will never rest in peace. I don’t believe that he was shot in the front because I know my husband. I knew my husband.”

  I was determined to see this through before I broke down again. Thoughts whirred through my head.

  Was Mickey shot as he tried to escape? If so, then the bullet would’ve gone through his back, not his front.

  Why were they trying so hard to push me to sign their forms? Why would the police do that?

  I had no answers as I stood there, Terry beside me looking anguished, Mickey lying dead on a trolley in a South London mortuary. But I knew I’d never rest until I got to the truth of how my husband died that fateful day, only weeks before the bleakest Christmas I’ve ever known.

  Chapter 9

  Fight for Justice

  December 1978

  In the criminal underworld, reputation is everything. Fronting up an armed member of the Flying Squad with only cotton wool for bullets would have been seen as insanity, even by blaggers with a questionable relationship with their rational minds. Mickey wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t a coward either. He was shot because he would’ve been the last to make a run for it after ensuring that his mates all got away before him. It was just common sense. That was why I felt so uneasy about the police claiming that Mickey had taken the bullet in the front of his body.

  To my mind there was no other explanation, knowing, as I did, Mickey’s perso
nality, how loyal he was to his pals. And I had seen him stuff the gun cartridges with padding on that dreadful day. The others must’ve got to the getaway car first while all hell was kicking off, and Mickey must’ve followed them and got shot in the process. I would’ve put a lot of money on that being the truth. But the real question was: if that was what really happened, then why were the police, the bastions of law and order, trying to make me sign a falsehood?

  The days following Mickey’s death flowed into one long, sleepless mess. I wept all day, huddled inside my blankets while Mum looked after Melanie and Neil. I’d asked Mum and Dad to swear on their lives that the kids would know nothing about this until I was ready to tell them. I told them to say that Mickey was in hospital, he’d hurt himself at work, and they weren’t to worry, they’d see him again soon. The children were used to spending time at Mum’s, and they liked it, as there were always loads of people round there. My youngest sibling Karen was only seven years older than Mel, so they had a good relationship. I knew they wouldn’t suspect anything for a while at least, and so I concentrated on the grief swamping me. The only thing that kept me going through those days were the talks I had with my solicitor. I’d rung him as soon as I left that morgue.

  “I want another autopsy done. I think they’re lyin’ to me. Can you help?” My voice was urgent. The man at the end of the phone paused for a second. “I’ll do everything I can, Linda.”

  “Find the highest person in the land to do it, then no-one can dispute the findings.” I put the phone down, swallowing down my tears, though this time they were mixed with anger.

  He called back a few days later. “Linda, you won’t believe this.”

  “What?”

  “The mortuary people are saying they’ve lost Mickey’s body.”

  “Lost the body?” I said, checking I’d heard him right.

  “Yes, lost the body. It gets worse, doesn’t it.”

  He’d had to apply to the court for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, which is normally used to bring to court crime suspects or witnesses who are generally alive. Not this time, though. Even the judge had commented that it was astonishing that he’d been asked to produce this writ to return an actual body.

  The police told the court that yes, they’d lost the body, at which point the judge said they had 24 hours to find my Mickey’s corpse or someone would be held responsible. Funnily enough, 24 hours later the body was “found”, and the new autopsy was ordered. I hadn’t been in court, so my lawyer told me all this over the telephone.

  At around the same time, Mickey’s brother Terry was contacted privately by a high-ranking police officer. Terry came to see me, to tell me the latest twist in the unfolding saga.

  “This officer said he couldn’t give me his name or rank, right, because he’d lose his job and his pension. But he said he was unhappy about what had happened, and that’s why he was callin’ me,” Terry said.

  “Apparently, Detective Sergeant Michael Banks,” Terry pronounced his name with a sneer, “the officer who killed my brother, spent that afternoon in the Director General pub, opposite the town hall in Eltham. At 5pm he left, carrying his gun, just as the raid was getting underway. Can ya believe it?”

  “Why would this copper tell you this? I don’t get it,” I said, confused.

  “Lin, that’s it, I don’t know why, either. Anyway, he said that DS Banks jumped out when he saw Mickey and the robbers, and started shooting indiscriminately, firing every bullet in his gun in the busy street. Apparently, it was a wonder no-one else was killed, or so he said. He also said that Mickey was killed, shot through the back while clinging to the back of the getaway motor as they tried to make their escape.”

  I sat down heavily on my sofa.

  This was all too much to take in. My intuition had been right. This was the reason they’d tried to hurry me into signing off the post-mortem.

  “It’s like the Flying Squad officers think they’re gods, or somethin’,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  I got straight on the phone to my solicitor, asking him to request all the information we could get from the police for the inquest. Only time would tell if that officer had been right.

  Christmas had come and gone, and I still hadn’t told my children that their father was dead.

  “You’ve got to tell them, Linda,” my mum said on Christmas Eve, her voice breaking a little with emotion. The children were tucked up in bed, excited about getting their stockings, but already Neil was asking where his daddy was.

  “It ain’t fair on them, you do understand that?” Mum sighed. This wasn’t easy for her either.

  “’Course I do, Mum, but I can’t bear to, not till after Christmas at least. Please let’s give them tomorrow, and then we can talk again, work out how we’ll tell them.”

  We spent Christmas Day at Mum and Dad’s, barely holding ourselves together. Mum confided in me that in the days after Mickey’s death, hard men, crook pals of my late husband, kept arriving at her door. Many of them brought toys or presents for the children, and wept openly in front of them, so they’d known something was up. Neil was too young to understand, and he was delighted to receive present after present, thinking Christmas had come early.

  “Melanie was different,” said Mum. “She kept asking why those men kept appearin’, and I didn’t know what to say.”

  I knew the grief she was feeling, and the worry for my kids. I had tried to smile as they opened their presents from me and Mickey, and squealed with glee with their new toys. Their innocence broke my heart afresh.

  Not long after we’d finished our sit-down Christmas dinner of roast turkey with all the trimmings cooked by Mum, we all collapsed on the lounge sofas, hoping that the children would be content with the television on and their new games. We’d watched the Queen, as was our tradition.

  After it had finished, Neil turned to me and said, “Why can’t we see Daddy today?”

  For a moment, I was stung into silence. I didn’t know what to say. I glanced over at Dad, who was sitting in the chair opposite, and he shook his head. He knew that today, of all days, wasn’t the right time to tell them the kind of news that would shatter their world.

  I breathed in. “Well, darlin’, come and sit on Mummy’s lap. There’s a good boy. Daddy needs to rest and the hospitals aren’t open on Christmas Day. The nurses and doctors have to have the day off to see their families, don’t they.” It was a blatant lie, but it was all I could think of. I’d been scared to bring up the whole idea of Mickey today, as much for my own grief as for the possibility of my children’s.

  Neil frowned. “That’s not true. Melanie says the hospitals are open and we can go and see him.” Neil looked up at me, his dear little face looking thoroughly determined.

  “That ain’t right, Neil, my darlin’. You just enjoy your train set. Look, your grandad wants to play with it with you.” I mouthed a silent thank you to my dad, who had joined Neil by the tree to set up the train tracks. Diversion was the only way I could stop Neil’s enquiring mind.

  It was a week after Christmas when Mum took hold of my hand one Sunday afternoon as we all sat round the telly, and said, “It’s time.”

  I knew instantly what she meant, and my eyes filled with tears.

  “I can’t,” I croaked, shaking my head. It was too much for me. I don’t think I was physically able to say those dreaded words.

  Mum nodded. She understood me straight away.

  “Then I will tell them, Linda, and I will do it now.”

  We held our gaze for a moment, the pain evident in both our faces. I nodded my assent. I knew that telling my children would be the hardest part of my widowhood, piling fresh grief onto my stricken feelings. I had held my grief at bay until now and my family had done the same – and now I saw the cost to them both. Mum had black circles under her eyes and a permanent worry line on her forehead. Dad looked older,
somehow, greyer, even though he was still fit and healthy. It was definitely time. I didn’t envy my mum’s decision to be the one to share the terrible news one bit.

  “Melanie, come with Nanny. I want you to come out for a drive with me,” Mum said, gently but firmly.

  “But why, Nanny?” asked Melanie as she looked up from her games.

  “Just come with Nanny, it’s ok, darlin’,” Mum smiled sadly. My heart swooped down into the pit of my belly. I wanted to shout and scream my anguish, the loss of their father, our beautiful Mickey. I wanted to tell the world how unfair it was, how he was a good man who loved his wife and kids, who didn’t mean to hurt anyone, who just wanted more than what he’d been given in life. But I could only sit and watch as Melanie reluctantly let Mum take her outside to tell her the worst possible thing a young girl could hear.

  I felt the tears come again. They came so easily these days, and I had to dig my nails into my hand to stop them in their tracks. I swallowed hard.

  “Where’s Melanie gone?” Neil asked, not taking his eyes off the car he was playing with on the floor.

  “Oh, just out with Nanny, I expect they’ll be back in a bit and you can go out for a drive too.” My lips trembled. I knelt down next to him, smelling his lovely clean boyish scent, and put my arms around him.

  “Mummy, that’s too tight, you’re hurtin’ me.” He wriggled out of my embrace.

  “Sorry, son, I didn’t mean to, I just love you so much,” I said, letting go of him and wiping away treacherous fresh tears that threatened to betray my emotions.

  At that minute, the street door banged open, and I heard a wail unlike any I’d heard before. It was Melanie.

  “Grandad, GRANDAD!” She screamed, running into the lounge and hurling herself into my dad’s arms. She was sobbing, her face red and sweaty from crying.

  “Oh, Melanie, oh darlin’,” I said, coming straight over to stroke her arm as my dad rocked her on his lap like a small baby. My gorgeous girl was distraught. Her heart was broken into a thousand shards that day.