Let This Be Our Secret

by Deric Henderson

  Derek has fond memories of Trevor’s diligence and attention to detail, and his great qualities as a friend: ‘He was well suited to that job [as scenes-of-crime officer] because, in my opinion, he had an eye for detail. He was a perfectionist in many ways and took pride in anything he did. He was very much into his home and his family and was big on the garden. Everybody remarked on how well he kept the house and the garden … It was pristine. Everything was in its proper place. He was forever keeping the place shining. He would be standing talking to you, and then he would see something in the garden, and he was away to fix it … He was the sort of person who would have done you a favour if he could. He would never see anybody stuck if you wanted anything. He would have given you the shirt off his back. He was very respectful: one of life’s gentlemen, and I don’t say that lightly. He was a man who was decent and thoughtful of other people; very proud of his family …’

  No one who knew Trevor was in any doubt that he adored his wife. A close friend recalls: ‘Trevor treated her like the Queen. The house was furnished to absolute perfection. She got anything she wanted, but she was not content. It wasn’t good enough.’

  And Trevor’s sister, Valerie Bleakley, agrees with this assessment: ‘Even just watching their body language, Trevor was almost in awe of Hazel. He hung on to her every word. He was proud of her. Whatever she wanted, he provided, no matter how he got it. She kept the house perfect. The holidays came later. She always wanted nice things: nice clothes, nice furniture. That’s my image of Hazel. He obviously thought she was good for him. But in hindsight, I don’t think so.’

  Hazel’s in-laws had welcomed her into the family from the outset, and every one of them could see what a terrific mother she was to the two children. But the material demands she made on her husband meant a squeeze on their finances from the start, as Gordon Buchanan remembers: ‘Hazel always liked material things, expensive things. Her needs would have been hard to meet at times. We were young police officers, starting new families, and there was a lot of expense. While our house was clean, it was often chaotic. The children had the freedom of the house and were naturally untidy. Hazel’s house always seemed immaculate, despite the children. I often wondered how on earth she was able to do it. Nothing was out of place. She was always well dressed, and I know it was hard [for Trevor] to meet her demands at times. [But] She was very much accepted into the family. I had no qualms about her. We got on well. I always found her a good chatter. She was friendly and easy to talk to.’

  Valerie recalls how she often despaired at her sister-in-law’s spending habits. She knew Trevor worked hard to make sure his wife wore good clothes and could buy furniture of the highest quality. She remembers how, not long after Trevor and family had moved to Omagh, Hazel was keen for her in-laws to admire a new computer keyboard she had insisted on having: ‘She was showing us this new £800 keyboard while food on the table would not have been on her list of priorities.’

  Relatives and friends were very much aware too that Trevor was kept well under his wife’s thumb. He once took a call from his best friend, John Wray, also an RUC man: John wanted to see him that night. It was 9 August 1984, the day that two of John’s colleagues – Sergeant Malcolm White and Nigel Shackleton – had been blown up, when a bomb exploded as their patrol car passed over a culvert on a road outside the village of Greencastle, County Tyrone. Malcolm, who had just been promoted to sergeant, died the following day. John had to travel in an army helicopter which flew the injured Nigel to the Tyrone County Hospital, Omagh, where he sympathized with and consoled the officer’s family. It had been a very difficult and distressing day, and John was exhausted and emotionally drained by the time he got home. He needed somebody to talk to, and so he was hoping that Trevor would come to the house and have a glass of whiskey with him.

  Trevor made his way over to John’s house in Omagh. Not long after he arrived, however, their conversation was interrupted, as John recalls: ‘I talked the whole incident through with him. Hazel came on the phone, telling Trevor to come home. I told her what had happened and that I wanted Ted – who wasn’t drinking at the time [anyway] – to stay. But she was having none of it, and said: “No. He has to come home. Tell him to come home now.” I had been through something terrible that afternoon, and she knew why Trevor was with me. I had plenty of work colleagues, but he was the one I turned to, because he was my mate. But as far as Hazel was concerned, she came first, no matter anybody else.’

  After the Buchanans moved to Coleraine in 1986, the two men and their families kept in touch and might have visited each other twice a year or so. John recalls the Buchanans calling at his house one summer when it had been arranged that the Wrays would show them a video recording of a family holiday in Florida. All the children were glued to the screen and, according to John, his close friend and colleague sat like a child too, excited by the images of the Wray family enjoying their time in the sun at Disney World. John remembers how Trevor then turned to Hazel and said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? We’ll have to go there ourselves. Maybe we could go as two families?’ But Hazel, who had been paying little or no interest to the video, wasn’t prepared to even consider her husband’s idea about going to America, or indeed anywhere else – her only response was to reply abruptly: ‘Trevor, I need a new suite of furniture.’

  It was August 1990 and, unknown to the visitors and to Trevor, she was already cheating with Colin Howell. But apparently that didn’t stop her from letting everyone know who was still boss when it came to her husband and children.

  5.

  In flagrante

  Colin Howell’s affair with Hazel Buchanan was supposed to have ceased when they were spotted together. Alan Topping, very much a part of the inner circle at Coleraine Baptist, was driving home when he saw the couple at the entrance to Castleroe Forest Park, just outside the town. They were in separate cars, but parked side by side with the windows open. Topping and his wife Margaret were friends of the Howells. The families had once holidayed together in Tenerife. Topping was also a good friend of Trevor.

  He telephoned Howell to express his dismay and challenged him to admit to the relationship. Howell refused to do so and, according to Howell, Topping ended a terse conversation with the remark: ‘If non-Christians can avoid having an affair, then you’ve no excuse.’

  But Lesley Howell had already known for some time that her marriage was in trouble. She and her husband were stressed to the hilt. They had just had their fourth child. Money was scarce because of the running costs of the new home and the dental practice. They were also having difficulty paying their bills and the Northern Bank had been in contact a number of times. But beyond all this, she could sense her husband was growing distant again.

  She first became suspicious when she overheard him on the telephone in the kitchen of their home and her antenna was up again, especially after his admission of a relationship with a girl he knew from his university days who lived in a neighbouring town. Lesley was ever vigilant for signs that he might be straying again, even though she did not immediately recognize them.

  Betty Bradley, who was Howell’s housekeeper at the time, remembers how Lesley once found a handful of 20p coins in her husband’s tracksuit bottoms and wondered why he would want access to such money when he went jogging. ‘Why, Betty?’ she asked her. ‘Why would a married man be carrying so many 20p pieces?’ The answer was that Howell needed them for the payphone when he contacted Hazel while out running the roads.

  Some time after this Howell went for a weekend away, telling his wife that he and a male friend had arranged to play golf. He claimed he needed a break because of the stresses in the marriage. He gave Lesley the name of his ‘alibi’ – the man he said he would be going away with. But she did not believe him. She challenged his friend, who assured her that everything Colin had told her was indeed true. They wanted to unwind and play eighteen holes. Colin, he told her, needed to get ‘his head showered’. But the young mother found it impossible to relax and r
id herself of the intuitive feeling her husband was being unfaithful again. Her instinct was absolutely right, because even though his friend had carefully rehearsed his lines, it later emerged that Howell had spent a night with Hazel in Bangor, County Down. Lesley once found condoms in his sports bag; one night, while socializing at the home of a friend, Howell cringed with embarrassment when a condom accidentally fell from his top pocket.

  Lesley was a proud woman who always did her best to put on a brave face in public. Howell acknowledged her ability to find a smile when someone called at the house – but the atmosphere and the mood behind the mahogany front door was grim and unpleasant. Unable to keep her suspicions to herself any longer, she decided to confide in John Hansford, the Englishman from Bromley in Kent who had been pastor in Coleraine since the summer of 1974. Hansford had attended the Irish Baptist College in Belfast and had been planning to return to England after his studies. But he then met and married Liz Graham, an English literature teacher at Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, County Down, and decided to settle in Northern Ireland.

  It wasn’t the first time Lesley had discussed matters of a highly personal nature with the pastor. She had previously revealed her distress about the three abortions she had had in the run-up to her wedding. As Hansford would later recall: ‘She was very, very distressed. We prayed. In James, it says: “Confess your sins to one another and pray with one another that you may be healed.” I was able to assure her that having heard her do that, God had forgiven her. That seemed to bring an amazing sense of relief to her. It was now out in the open with someone else who she felt mattered.’ And now, as she broke down and shared her fears that her husband was being unfaithful, Lesley Howell was once more very troubled.

  The pastor decided to confront Howell immediately at his clinic, in a side room away from the staff reception area and out of earshot of waiting patients. But any suggestions of infidelity on his part were met with a categorical denial by the dentist: ‘Definitely not,’ he had replied.

  Hansford then went to see Hazel at the Buchanans’ home. Trevor was out and, once the children had been settled in another room, Hansford explained to Hazel that the purpose of his visit was pastoral. When he shared his concerns with her she too denied that there was any affair – although she did speak to the pastor about her disappointment at what, according to him, she perceived as her husband’s lack of ambition, and about her longing for more excitement in her life.

  It seemed that, in his quest to establish the truth, Hansford had met with another brick wall. However, when Hazel offered to give him a lift back to the Baptist Manse, she finally admitted that she had been economical with the truth. As they sat in Trevor’s car outside the pastor’s house, her confession was a tearful one. Hansford recalls: ‘… She [said she] had lied. She was having an affair with Colin. She gave me the impression it had only just started, but I subsequently found out it had been going on for a little while longer.’

  Within an hour, the pastor was back with Lesley again, and together they awaited Howell’s return from work. The pastor confronted him at once: ‘I told him he had lied before about the situation. He was very apologetic and I told him he must stand down from his responsibilities within the church, immediately. I told him he … was not to take communion. We would have communion every Sunday, a bit like the Brethren. It would be a step in church discipline for the Baptist denomination of churches. Because of [Colin and Hazel’s] behaviour, which was considered un-Christian and not consistent with the Gospel. It was a disciplinary action. It was a serious step and marked the fact that I took the matter very seriously.’

  Howell’s hard-won confession tallied with that of his lover in one very important respect. While both were now at last prepared to admit that the intense friendship between them was inappropriate, they were both adamant that the relationship had been unconsummated. They insisted – to the pastor, and to their respective spouses – that the affair had not been a fully sexual one.

  Hansford called to see the Buchanans again, and this time Trevor was at home. His wife’s revelations – even such as they were – hit the young policeman very hard, as the pastor remembers: ‘It was obviously a desperately tense situation. Trevor was totally and absolutely devastated and he was really, really angry. He managed to control his temper, presumably because [I] was there. Trevor and Lesley felt a tremendous sense of embarrassment, shame and humiliation.’

  The church elders were informed and disciplinary action initiated. Howell had to resign from all church organizations. Hazel also stepped back from her Sunday School duties without explaining why to the parents. Both were banned from taking communion and, for a short period, it was arranged that the couples would not attend the same services in the church: if the Buchanans came to a morning service, the Howells would come to the evening one. As time passed, this was relaxed a little, but if ever the two couples turned up on Sunday morning, then the Howells would sit at the front, on the right-hand side, and the Buchanans at the back, on the left-hand side. Otherwise, it was agreed that the families would have no further contact. Lesley said to a friend at the time: ‘How could Trevor Buchanan sit and look into the back of my husband’s head, knowing what he had done?’

  It was an awkward and delicate situation which needed careful handling. Staying away from church, however, was not an option for either couple, as Pastor Hansford explains: ‘They still wanted to attend the church. Trevor and Lesley felt the church was so much part of their family and looked to me, and the church, for support. The church was their whole life.’ It was decided that the church congregation would not be informed. Both couples wanted their difficulties to be kept private, but they agreed to undergo counselling with Pastor Hansford. They did not want anybody else involved. This kind of discretion was very much in line with the Baptist approach to personal problems involving church members.

  As far as both couples were concerned, divorce was not an option to be considered, even though it was not something which would have been ruled out by the church, as Hansford explains: ‘I told them it was my understanding that divorce was allowed [by the church] because of adultery. As far as my reading of the Bible was, I told them they had two options: you can divorce and I will support you through that divorce; or [you can] seek reconciliation. Both were biblical options. The New Testament doesn’t assume that because of adultery, you end the marriage. We believe in forgiveness, even forgiveness for the breaking of the marriage covenant. They had two options and I told them that whatever path they [went] down, I would support them … [and that] they could stay on as members of the church.’

  Both couples wanted reconciliation. Or so it seemed when the pastor called at both homes to hold initial counselling sessions with them. He privately felt at the time that Hazel was out of her depth in the relationship with Howell, not sufficiently streetwise and without the necessary guile to carry on an affair. As for Howell, Hansford was not convinced of the sincerity of his desire to save his marriage: ‘Colin was always very cagey with me throughout the discussions, which was in total contrast to Lesley, who was always extremely open …’ In the counselling session with Lesley, Hansford felt Howell was reluctant and evasive, and when he did speak it was only to say what he thought they wanted to hear.

  Apart from Pastor Hansford, the church elders and those directly affected, nobody was supposed to know. But Lesley revealed her distress to some close girlfriends, and within their own church circle there were heightening concerns the marriage might not last.

  The Howells told other friends as well. After finishing off some dental treatment one day, Howell had a quiet word in his private office with a patient, Harry Donaghy, an electrician who had worked for him to help get the practice ready in Ballymoney and whose wife Tania was of course a member of staff. Meanwhile, Lesley told Tania in the surgery’s kitchen, leaving her good friend and a woman who used to be their babysitter in no mood to forgive.

  Tania Donaghy’s professional relationship with
her boss as nurse and receptionist, which stretched back to the days when he first arrived in Coleraine in 1983, was never the same again. Lesley was regularly in and out of the surgery with the children and was close to Tania. They went to the same church and occasionally had meals out. Tania had never previously heard a bad word about Howell, but after Lesley’s revelations she refused to return to the clinic after time off on maternity leave. Harry Donaghy later told police: ‘I knew it was becoming difficult for Tania to look Colin in the face … she felt betrayed.’

  To his wife, Howell expressed his remorse and regret, insisting the affair was over. At first she was inclined to believe him. According to friends, at one stage Howell knelt down and begged her forgiveness. Lesley also wanted the marriage to continue, and told him that, once he had proved he was fully repentant, then she wanted them to renew their marital vows. She even bought him a new Bible as a special keepsake. Howell told friends he was deeply sorry for what happened. He said he couldn’t help himself and asked one woman: ‘Have you never felt like that?’

  Trevor Buchanan was also deeply hurt but he was prepared to try to make a fresh start as, apparently, was his wife. But he was anxious that nobody else would find out, especially his colleagues in Coleraine police station. He confided in just two people: his section leader and his brother Victor. Victor recalls: ‘He didn’t want anybody to know about it. He didn’t want the boys in the station to know about it. He felt it could be got over, that things could get back on track and nobody would ever know it happened.’