I wanted to know more.
‘All right,’ I said. I put down my pen. ‘Show me.’
The page contained a screenshot of the text that Diana Cowper had sent to her son just before she died.
I have seen the boy who
was lacerated and I’m afraid
‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.
‘She was interrupted before she finished,’ I said. ‘There’s no full stop. She didn’t have time to say what she was afraid of.’
‘Or maybe she was just afraid. Maybe she was too afraid to worry about the full stop at the end of the sentence.’
‘Meadows was right. It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Then maybe this will help.’ Hawthorne pulled out three more pages, copies of newspaper articles written ten years before.
DAILY MAIL – FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 2001
TWIN BOY KILLED IN HIT-AND-RUN HORROR
His brother is in critical condition but doctors say he will recover.
An eight-year-old boy was fighting for his life and his twin brother was killed by a short-sighted motorist who ploughed into both children before driving off.
Jeremy Godwin was left with injuries which include a fractured skull and a severe laceration of the brain. His brother, Timothy, died instantly.
The accident took place at half past four on Thursday afternoon on The Marine in the coastal resort of Deal, Kent.
The two boys, who have been described as ‘inseparable’, were returning to their hotel with their nanny, 25-year-old Mary O’Brien. She told the police: ‘The car came round the corner. The driver didn’t even try to slow down. She hit the children and drove straight off. I’ve been with the family for three years and I’m devastated. I couldn’t believe she didn’t stop.’
Police have arrested a 52-year-old woman.
THE TELEGRAPH – SATURDAY, 9 JUNE 2001
POLICE ARREST SHORT-SIGHTED DRIVER WHO KILLED TWIN
The woman who killed eight-year-old twin, Timothy Godwin, and inflicted life-threatening injuries on his brother has been named as Diana Cowper. Mrs Cowper, 52, is a long-term resident of Walmer, Kent, and was returning from the Royal Cinq Ports Golf Club when the accident took place.
Mrs Cowper, who had been drinking at the club-house with friends, was not over the limit and witnesses have confirmed that she was not speeding. However, she was driving without her spectacles and in a test conducted by the police she was unable to read a registration plate 25 feet away.
Her lawyers have made the following statement. ‘Our client had spent the afternoon playing golf and was on her way home when the incident took place. She had unfortunately mislaid her glasses but thought she would be able to drive the relatively short distance without them. She admits that she panicked following the accident and drove straight home. However, she was fully aware of the seriousness of what she had done and contacted the police within two hours that same evening.’
Police have charged Mrs Cowper under Sections 1 and 170 (2) and (4) of the Road Traffic Act of 1988. She faces charges of causing death by dangerous driving and failing to stop at the scene of an accident.
Mrs Cowper gave her address as Liverpool Road, Walmer. She had recently lost her husband after a long illness. Her 23-year-old son, Damian Cowper, is an actor who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and who was last seen in The Birthday Party on the West End stage.
THE TIMES – TUESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2001
FAMILY CALLS FOR CHANGE IN LAW AS HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER WALKS FREE
The mother of an eight-year-old boy killed as he was crossing the road in the seaside town of Deal, Kent, spoke out today as the driver walked free.
Timothy Godwin died instantly and his twin brother, Jeremy, received severe lacerations to the brain after Diana Cowper, 52, failed to see them. It turned out that Mrs Cowper had left her spectacles at the golf club where she had been playing and was unable to see beyond twenty feet.
Canterbury Crown Court had heard that she had not broken the law by not wearing her glasses. Judge Nigel Weston QC said: ‘It was not a wise idea to drive without your spectacles but they were not a legal requirement as the law stands and there can be no doubting your remorse. In the light of this, I have decided that a custodial sentence would not be appropriate.’
Mrs Cowper was disqualified from driving for a year, had nine penalty points added to her licence and was ordered to pay £900 costs. The judge also suggested three months of restorative justice but the family of the two boys have refused to meet her.
Speaking outside the court, Judith Godwin said: ‘Nobody should be allowed to get behind the wheel of a car if they can’t see. If that’s not against the law then the law should be changed. My son is dead. My other son has been crippled. And she just gets a slap on the wrist. That can’t be right.’
A spokesperson for Brake, the road safety charity, said: ‘Nobody should drive if they are not fully in control of their car.’
I looked at the dates above the three articles and made the connection. ‘This all happened exactly ten years ago,’ I exclaimed.
‘Nine years and eleven months,’ Hawthorne corrected me. ‘The accident was at the start of June.’
‘It’s still pretty much the anniversary.’ I handed back the third article. ‘And the boy who survived … he had brain lacerations.’ I picked up Diana Cowper’s text. ‘… the boy who was lacerated’.
‘You think there’s a connection?’
I assumed he was being sarcastic but I didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Do you know where she lives?’ I asked. ‘Judith Godwin?’
Hawthorne searched through the other pages. ‘There’s an address in Harrow-on-the-Hill.’
‘Not Kent?’
‘They might have been on holiday. The first week in June … that’s summer half-term.’
So perhaps Hawthorne had children after all. How else would he have known? But I didn’t dare raise that subject again. Instead, I asked: ‘Are we going to see her?’
‘No need to hurry. And we’ve got a meeting with Mr Cornwallis just down the road.’ My mind had gone blank for a moment. I had no idea who he was referring to. ‘The undertaker,’ he reminded me. He began to gather up the documents, drawing them towards him like a croupier with a pack of cards. It was interesting that as much as Detective Inspector Meadows had disliked him, someone higher up in the Met was taking him seriously. The crime scene had been left untouched for his examination. He was being kept fully in the loop.
Hawthorne stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Once again, I noticed, I’d paid for the coffees.
We took the number 14 back down the Fulham Road, the same bus used by Diana Cowper on the day she died. We exited, as Hawthorne would have put it, at twelve twenty-six and retraced our steps to the funeral parlour.
I hadn’t been to a funeral parlour since my father died – and that was a long time ago. I had been twenty-one years old. Although he had suffered a protracted illness, the end had come very suddenly and the whole family was poleaxed. For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, an uncle stepped in and took control of the burial arrangements … after years of agnosticism, my father had expressed a desire to have an orthodox funeral. I’m sure my uncle thought he was doing us a favour but unfortunately, he was a loud, opinionated man and I can’t say I’d ever been very fond of him. Even so, I found myself accompanying him to a funeral parlour in north London. In Jewish families, the burial happens very quickly and I hadn’t yet had time to accept what was happening; I was still in shock. I have vague memories of a large room that was more like a lost property office in a railway station than an undertaker’s. Everything was very dark, in different shades of brown. There was a short, bearded man standing behind a counter, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a yarmulke: the funeral director or perhaps one of his assistants. As if in a nightmare, I see a crowd of people surrounding me. Were they other customers or staff? I seem to remember that there was no privacy.