‘I am afraid to tell you that your son has been found dead this morning. He was in his flat and we think he died of a drugs overdose,’ I said gently, for the second time within an hour.
Now I had two banshees. The screams must have been heard right through the adjacent offices. I had to get these two out of here quickly.
Bombarded with questions, denials, more questions and waterfalls of tears I managed to extricate the two devastated parents from the building, into the car and away to nearby relatives. There I went through the announcement for the third time, before leaving the mum and dad in the care of someone they loved.
I have no doubt they weep to this day. No-one should have to bury their offspring. As Grace says in Dead Tomorrow when explaining to Cleo why Lynn Beckett went to such lengths to save her daughter Caitlin’s life: ‘The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.’
There are lots of aspects of the job that don’t necessarily fit in with the idea that the police’s role is to cut crime. Giving death messages is an obvious one. Just as Grace applies Locard’s principle of ‘every contact leaves a trace’ to the forensic quandaries facing him with the recovered bodies in Dead Tomorrow so it applies to the personal contacts the police have with ordinary people. The way officers speak to and treat those they are telling of an unexpected death will mark those people for life. All personal baggage must be left at the door. Be it the fight they have just been to, the tray full of reports waiting for them, the grief from home for being late off duty, nothing must interfere with that moment.
Bad enough that the bereaved have been visited by the angel of death, but to taint that further with arrogance, insensitivity or clumsiness would be criminal. Thankfully officers acting in such a way tend to be confined to television fiction; in reality they are invariably all you would hope them to be.
I pray you never have to find out for yourselves.
10: Blinded in the Night
That couple of months between Christmas and the first daffodils of spring can be a great time for the police. Less partying means fewer people inflicting unspeakable evil on each other; a welcome breather for beleaguered cops. The year of 1998 was the exception that proves the rule. We’d had the calm, now followed the storm.
This was a time of new beginnings for me. Fifteen months previously, after five years of trying, Julie had finally fallen pregnant — with triplets. Going from the despair of childlessness to hitting the triple jackpot on our first IVF attempt was as wondrous as it was exhausting. We had never predicted that we would have a complete family delivered in one go.
Julie had selflessly taken voluntary redundancy from her career at Gatwick Airport to fund and prepare for the fertility treatment. She put heart and soul into trying everything to conceive, including some incredibly painful and intrusive operations. We were both heading towards our mid-thirties and were worrying whether we would ever have the family we so craved.
The IVF had gone as well as such a physically and emotionally draining procedure could. The first pregnancy test in mid-December 1996 had us leaping, gently, around the Christmas tree — Julie would not get to use the new squash racket I had bought her as a present that day for some years.
A very nervous and edgy few weeks of the New Year ended with a scan in early February, which diagnosed twins, but the hesitancy in the obstetrician’s poorly hidden reaction scared us.
Four weeks later, this time at a different hospital, the crowd of doctors and midwives that the sonographer called in again did nothing to relieve our fears.
A hushed pow-wow around the screen ended with the announcement, ‘Mr and Mrs Bartlett, you are pregnant with triplets.’
Our reflex was just to burst into laughter and query, ‘Are you sure there are no more?’
‘No, just the three. Congratulations.’
Our euphoria was short-lived, however. As soon as we left the ultrasound room the consultant obstetrician called us in.
‘You do realize we don’t advise that triplet pregnancies are viable. You run a huge risk to all the babies if you continue with it. I strongly recommend that you reduce the pregnancy.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You should only look to carry two of the babies.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A simple injection into one of the babies will terminate it, leaving you with a more optimistic prognosis.’
‘So kill a healthy baby. That’s what you’re saying?’ Julie asked through her tears.
‘Well, that’s a harsh way to put it.’
‘But that’s what it boils down to,’ she wailed.
She and I looked at each other for no more than a second. Words between us were not necessary.
‘No way,’ insisted Julie. ‘If this pregnancy is meant to be then we will give all our babies a chance. How can you suggest killing one?’
‘Well,’ the pompous cold doctor continued, ‘they will be premature and we won’t have room for them here so they will be farmed out to other hospitals.’
‘How dare you,’ I snarled. ‘This is our dream and you are not going to wreck it.’
We stormed out, marched to the car and held each other laughing and crying for the next twenty minutes.
Thankfully, the doctor who had carried out the IVF and first spotted two babies was more sympathetic. He was the clinical director at another hospital and took us under his care, saw us every two weeks and admitted Julie as an inpatient for ten weeks until Conall George, Niamh Sarah and Deaglan John, three healthy babies, were delivered at thirty-four weeks.
Julie’s pregnancy had gone swimmingly and the triplets have grown into wonderful, intelligent, loving and healthy young adults. Thankfully I have never met that miserable consultant obstetrician since, but in some ways I would love to and show him the results of us dismissing his cruel advice.
By February 1998 Conall, Niamh and Deaglan were at that dangerous crawling stage where everything that was in reach was subjected to either the mouth or the drop test. As with the fictional DC Nick Nicholl, sleep was just a pipe dream. I’d recently returned, as a DS, to the city I loved. I had previously been posted from Haywards Heath to work at Headquarters for an Assistant Chief Constable — thankfully quite unlike Grace’s nemesis ACC Vosper — but now I was back.
The country was mourning the death of Princess Diana, the Japanese Winter Olympics were about to start and President Bill Clinton had just asserted his undying fidelity to wife Hillary in a national address. The twenty-first century was now within touching distance and people were pondering whether Armageddon would strike when the planet’s computers went into meltdown, unable to cope with eight-figure date formats: the millennium bug that fortunately never was.
It was always a relief for Glynn Morgan when he could finally lock up his cramped pizza takeaway restaurant squeezed among a row of shops on Church Road, Hove. A twelve-hour day getting deliveries out on time, serving the passing trade of ravenous drunks and managing unreliable employees could take its toll. Lucky for Glynn that his partner and soulmate Fiona Perry was always there to help ease the burden and lift his spirits.
Glynn and Fiona lived in a compact mid-terrace flat in central Hove just a stone’s throw from the scene of the crash that killed Tony Revere and set in train the most ruthless campaign of revenge in Dead Man’s Grip. The roads in that area are narrow, giving a feeling of a close community who look out for each other. People were friendly, which was just as well as parking was a nightmare. Tolerance was essential in avoiding road rage.