The woman dropped her official stance of not being able to help and agreed to put all the stranded passengers up in a hotel bed for the night. As a goodwill gesture, the airline also agreed to pay for an evening meal with breakfast the following morning. It wasn’t perfect but at least it solved my immediate problem of where I was going to sleep that night.
The other passengers, having witnessed my personal meltdown, took pity on me and took me under their wing. We all boarded the airport coach together to travel to the hotel and shared dinner together that night. When I awoke the following morning, I had a raging earache. I knew instantly that I needed antibiotics. I’d suffered with recurrent infections of my middle ear over the years since Colette’s murder. My doctor had told me it had been brought on by stressful situations and now, just as I should have felt inner peace for the first time in 26 years, I was faced with even more stress. My body was in meltdown once more.
After breakfast, I asked reception for directions and walked to a nearby chemist to try and get medication for it. The female pharmacist was kind but there was nothing she could sell me over the counter to cure it. I needed a prescription, so she directed me to a doctor’s surgery further along the road.
Thankfully, I was able to make an emergency appointment and saw a doctor who prescribed me with some antibiotic drops.
I left the hotel at 4.30am on the morning of the flight to Athens. As it was due to land at 1.30pm, and I would be faced with a day and night waiting for my connecting flight, Peter told me to catch the last bus from Athens for Zakynthos, which left three hours later at 4.30pm. In order to do this, I had to get across the city of Athens, which takes over an hour by bus. I didn’t want anything else to go wrong so I decided to catch a taxi instead but when I arrived, I discovered that the taxis were on strike that day! It was a series of strikes throughout Greece and there was general mayhem.
To say that I was stressed out was an understatement.
Once I was home, what had been said in court ran over and over in my head. I couldn’t help it. All I could think about was the horrible disgusting things that animal had done to my lovely daughter. On reflection, I should have taken a short holiday away from everything. I’d gone through a very emotional time and I needed to give myself to recover – to withdraw from the world for a while, take time out to make sense of it all. Back in the safety of my Greek hilltop home, I hid myself away and shed tears in secret. Again I wondered if my baby had screamed out for me. Had she called for her dad? What hell had she been through? What pain had she endured? Had that bastard laughed as he clamped his hands around her throat, squeezing the very life from her? Had he laughed at us for all those years? I had visions of Colette screaming, kicking and fighting to escape. I wished I could turn the clock back so that everything would be OK again.
Colette was so real in my dreams and nightmares that I felt as if I could reach out and touch her and pull her back to me. It was only the following morning that I’d wake up in a cold sweat and realise she wasn’t OK, that she was gone and that all those visions and nightmares had been real.
Soon February gave way to March and, before I knew it, the summer season was upon us once more. Greece was now inundated with happy holidaymakers, families having fun. It was always a difficult time of year for me.
It wasn’t until the end of April 2010 that I began to feel more like myself again. Mark had planned to come out to see me on holiday. I was looking forward to it, as he would be there for my birthday. On the day, we went out for a lovely birthday meal, just the two of us, as Peter was away for a couple of weeks on one of his sailing breaks. For the first time in years, Mark and I laughed and joked almost like old times. We both seemed much happier, lighter in spirit as if a lifetime of tension had lifted almost overnight.
We spent a couple of weeks just enjoying each other’s company. The rest of the summer flew by with the usual comings and goings of visitors to our house. It kept me busy. I visited old friends who knew about Colette and what we’d been through. Most had watched the news in Greece on the satellite TV channels. Many of my Greek friends had asked after me; they all wanted to know if I was coping. And I was, just about.
A close friend asked me to help out with her business, which dealt with internet car bookings for holidaymakers. I agreed. Most of the summer, I was stationed at the airport handing over cars and taking cash to the office. Everyone seemed to have a job for me to do. It kept me on my feet and made sure my mind was active. In short, it stopped me thinking too much about things.
All was as well as could be expected. But, on 10 October 2010, my life changed again in an instant.
It was a Sunday and Peter and I had been invited over to a friend’s barbeque. They owned a hotel on the island but it had closed up for the winter and they’d asked us to go along that day for something to eat. Peter’s son was over on holiday so he came with us.
My friend’s husband had been fishing earlier that morning. He cooked us some lovely fresh fish and squid on the barbeque, while his wife had made various salads, Greek dips and homemade desserts. We were just starting to eat some of the delicious food that they had prepared when my mobile phone rang. I put my glass of wine down on the table and rummaged through my bag looking for it. I noticed the time on my watch. It was 12.30pm in Greece, so it was still early in the UK. As I pulled the phone from my handbag, I saw Kevin’s name flash up on the screen. I’d not spoken to him since leaving England after the court case, nine months earlier, so I wondered why he would be ringing me now, especially so early on a Sunday morning. It had to be important.
Kevin’s voice sounded serious and urgent. ‘Jacqui, it’s Kevin,’ he began. ‘Where are you?’
I stifled a smile. He always asked me the same question every time he rang, bless him. I told him I was safe at a barbecue.
I knew from the sound of Kevin’s voice that this wasn’t good news. I thought of Hutchinson – he was safely behind bars so it couldn’t be anything to do with him. Then my mind flashed to my family back home in the UK. Were they all right? Panic set in.
‘What is it, Kevin?’ I asked urgently, but part of me did not want to know the answer.
My friends were laughing, chatting and drinking wine in the background. This was a happy day but I knew that Kevin was about to tell me something that would turn my world upside down all over again.
‘Hutchinson was found dead in his cell this morning,’ Kevin told me, his voice serious and sombre.
‘What!’ I exclaimed.
My friends heard my startled reaction and looked over. But I was in too much shock to explain what I’d just been told.
‘Jacqui, he was found dead in his cell this morning,’ Kevin repeated.
‘How?’ I asked. I was shaking with anger. After all these years, we’d got the bastard only for him to die in a prison cell less than nine months into his life sentence.
‘At this point in time, we don’t know how he died or whether it was natural causes.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I gasped. I couldn’t.
Soon shock gave way to hot angry tears. They began to cascade down my face until my linen trousers were marked with dark pools of water. My tears stained the fabric on my thighs and turned it a deeper shade in the hot midday sun.
I’d wished Hutchinson dead many times over the years, but now that he was I had mixed emotions. I felt cheated. I wanted him to serve more than just a few measly months of his life sentence.
There was a pause in the conversation between Kevin and me. Neither of us knew what to say. We were both devastated that, after all these years of looking for him, we’d caught Hutchinson only for him to slip through the net of life. I’d wanted him to suffer, but now he was gone and he couldn’t suffer any more. I felt a loss, but not the loss I’d experienced after Colette. This was a different kind of loss – bitterness at his escape from life and punishment. Hutchinson needed to be punished but, in my eyes, he’d escaped that punishment, just as he’d evaded capture.
‘It’s bittersweet, isn’t it?’ Kevin remarked, finally breaking the silence.
‘Yes,’ I replied, my voice rendered paper-thin with emotion.
‘They don’t know at this time how he died. The prison wardens went into his cell this morning to wake him up but they couldn’t wake him. They called the paramedics…’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, interrupting Kevin. ‘All these years we’ve waited for it and now he’s not even going to get to serve his sentence – not even half of it.’
Hutchinson died in prison but not as I’d promised Colette. He’d not died an old man – he’d died in the mid-term of his life. But while she was lying cold in her grave, Hutchinson had lived his life. I felt bereft for Colette, bereft for my family and for myself. It was as though somehow, by his death, we had let her down. We’d unmasked her killer only for him to slip away again.
Kevin warned me that the media would start calling and, sure enough, as soon as they heard the news, my phone started ringing off the hook. The local paper telephoned to ask if I’d heard the news. A female journalist waited for my response to the rumour that Hutchinson had possibly stockpiled his own medication.
‘How do you feel about the fact that he could have taken his own life?’ she asked gently.
‘I hope he rots in hell,’ I replied. ‘If he did kill himself, I think it’s a coward’s way out, but, then, he’s been a coward from the beginning. I just hope that he inflicted enough injuries on himself or took enough medication to die in a way that was as terrible as Colette’s death.’
It had been another kick in the teeth for us all.
Two separate investigations were launched – one by the police and another by the Prison and Probations Ombudsman.
On 24 October 2011 – over a year later, and almost 28 years after he’d murdered my lovely daughter – an inquest was held into the death of Paul Hutchinson. I remained in Greece, but my brother Michael travelled up to Nottingham for it.
The inquest heard how Hutchinson had taken a fatal cocktail of prescription drugs and was discovered unconscious in his cell. A prison officer had found him at 8.30am on the morning of 10 October 2010. When staff failed to rouse him, paramedics were called and attempted to resuscitate him for between 20 and 30 minutes. Hutchinson was taken by ambulance to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, where he was pronounced dead at 9.55am.
It was revealed that Hutchinson had tried to stash pills in his cell on an earlier occasion. More than 40 antidepressant pills were found in a sock.
His daughter from his second marriage told Nottingham Coroner’s Court how her father had seemed despondent in the days leading up to his death. His wife had asked for a divorce and the divorce decree was due just nine days later. Hutchinson had been on suicide watch and monitoring for self-harm on at least two or three occasions before, but he was not on those at the time of his death.
The inquest heard how he’d died of an overdose after consuming a large quantity of drugs, including antidepressants, an anti-epilepsy drug and paracetamol. At the end of the two-day hearing, a jury returned a verdict of suicide.
Like Harold Shipman before him, Hutchinson had taken the easy way out. Thanks to the brilliant work of the police, we’d had our day in court and Hutchinson had been revealed for the evil man he truly was. We’d finally got justice for Colette, only for that very same justice to be snatched away from her in a heartbeat.
But her killer’s death had been resolved in a way that Colette’s never could be. He’d taken the coward’s way out because he didn’t have the courage to serve his life term in prison. At least his family got to know it was suicide and found out what happened. I’m never going to be able to get that for Colette. We never got real closure because we never got answers and now we never will.
To be honest, I don’t care how that bastard died; it won’t bring my lovely Colette back. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that he can’t ever do this to anyone else’s daughter. He can’t hurt, lie or cheat any more. Now he’s in hell – a place he’s always belonged.
AFTERWORD
NOVEMBER 2011
As I sit here writing this, I think of Colette in happier times. Life for me moves forward now and, instead of living in the past, I feel as though, for the first time in my life, I can now actually look towards the future. I’m a different person to the Jacqui I was for those 26 long years. I am calmer, I feel less stressed, and I am generally more at peace with life and all that it throws at me.
My life isn’t perfect, no one’s is, but I know how lucky I am to be living on such a beautiful Greek Island. Each morning as I wake, I can look out at fantastic views from our mountaintop home – the olive grove and the breathtaking views of the ocean. It brings me a kind of inner calm. It is something that no amount of money can buy and, like my beautiful Colette, it is priceless.
I may not have Colette in my arms but she’s in my heart every second of every day. I also have Mark and my beautiful grandsons, so, in many ways, I feel blessed. I am also very lucky to have such wonderful family and friends. All these things add up to a happier and more content life.
Today, I try to concentrate on the happier times that we shared as a family – the fun and laughter of all those family holidays and the fact that as a mother I was blessed with two beautiful children. They were brought up in a family of love. They always knew how much they were loved – a day didn’t pass by without Tony and me telling them this. I think back to all those happy Christmas Days that we shared together, when the four of us would snuggle up in our bed and open our presents together. I will never forget my delight and pride watching both Mark and Colette grow up and become fine young adults. It still makes me very proud to think of them both.
When I think of Colette particularly, I think of all the funny little things she would say. I remember her voice; I remember her giggling and laughing constantly with her good friends. Many of these girls have remained loyal to her to this day. As I look around at all her dancing medals and certificates, her teenage jewellery and her small fluffy toys, I recall happy times. Above all, I remember that, despite everything else, we were blessed with a very happy, special daughter.
Colette, you will always be with me, no matter where I am. I love you, Colette – we all do and always will.
All my love,
Mum
x
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First published in paperback in 2012
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Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years Page 21