My heart was telling me that Ray and Michelle’s suspicions about her being Lee’s killer seemed far more likely, but in my head there was a little voice that kept telling me she was innocent. I didn’t want to believe that she’d told a pack of lies and that she would put us through this nightmare to save her own skin. The police had said nothing to make me think otherwise. They knew what we were going through. Surely, if they thought Tracie had made up her story, they’d tell us. All I wanted was to give Tracie a chance to tell us the truth.
The next day, the tabloid newspapers went berserk with their coverage of the press conference. HACKED FROM EAR TO EAR said the headline in the Daily Star. ROADRAGE BLOODBATH said the Sun, while the Daily Mirror went for SLAUGHTERED.
Seeing ourselves on the television news bulletins made Lee’s death real. It was the first time we’d ever been involved with the press and it was strange after reading so many similar stories about other families to see our photos and Lee’s on the news.
Our phone never stopped ringing. Reporters wanting to know if we’d give interviews, friends and family calling to ask if they could come over and see us. We didn’t want to see anyone. We just wanted to be alone, to try to make sense of so much madness at a time when everyone else was getting ready for Christmas.
I don’t know where we found the courage and strength to cope. Seeing the decorations, cards, Christmas trees and coloured lights festooned in all the shops… and, all the time, I seemed to be the only one who was prepared to give Tracie the benefit of the doubt. Even Anita wasn’t taken in by Tracie’s story. She told us that Danielle had been at Tracie’s on the day Lee had been killed.
Tracie had arranged to take her and Carla to have some photographs taken at a local studio but, when Lee had offered to drop Danielle back at Anita’s, Tracie had started arguing with him. The girls had told the police they’d heard a fierce row that afternoon and Tracie had told Lee she didn’t trust him with Anita.
Just as Lee was convinced Tracie still fancied Carla’s dad Andy, Tracie believed something was still going on between him and Anita. It was typical of the jealousy between them. Totally unfounded but enough to trigger another almighty row which ended after Tracie took both girls home without Lee – Carla to Irene’s and Danielle to Anita’s.
The fateful trip out to the Marlbrook pub that same evening had been an unsuccessful attempt to kiss and make up.
On Thursday, the day after the press conference, DS Mick O’Donnell and Brian Russell, our liaison officers, came to the house to take statements from Ray and me. The news they brought was far better than we could ever have hoped for so soon after the public appeal for witnesses.
Two people had come forward after seeing us on the television and reading the newspaper reports. It was a major breakthrough. The police had set up eight roadblocks on the Sunday night along the route that Tracie and Lee had taken. But, even though 120 of the 650 drivers questioned had been along the same roads over the weekend when Lee had been killed, none of them had seen the car chase that Tracie had described.
‘What did they say?’ I asked Brian. ‘Did they see the other car? Surely you can tell us something?’
No matter how many questions we asked, Mick and Brian weren’t able to answer any of them. It was vital nothing was leaked to the media at such a crucial stage in the inquiry, Mick told us. The less we knew about the witnesses, the less we could be tempted to say anything to the reporters who were camped outside our house. They’d also turned up at my hairdressing salon, asking staff about Lee and Tracie, and had even found out where Danielle went to school and had been chatting to pupils at the main gates, trying to find out who she was and what she looked like.
It was upsetting and annoying, but the story of Lee’s death was so big that we knew nothing would stop journalists trying to find out as much as they could about him and Tracie. We had no intention of speaking to anyone but the police and our family. But we understood why the police had to keep the details of the witnesses under wraps. It was hard, but Ray and I knew we had to be patient; we had to put our trust in the police and wait.
The interviews for our statements were done separately and, as a formality, to eliminate us from the inquiry, we both had our fingerprints taken.
When they asked me if Lee carried a knife, I said the only one I’d ever known him own was when he’d been a member of the Boy’s Brigade 13 years earlier. Alan Lee, the chap who ran the local Boy’s Brigade group, had asked the parents of all the boys for their consent for him to give one to each of the boys, which the parents had paid for. As far as I knew, Lee had kept it in a box of memorabilia which I thought he’d taken to Tracie’s.
They also asked about Lee and whether I’d thought he was happy or was sometimes moody. I said Lee had been happy until he’d met Tracie and that, yes, he had been quite moody in the months before his death. I explained that he and Tracie had rowed constantly and had split up on several occasions, but, every time Lee left her and moved back home, Tracie would stalk him and constantly phone the house.
‘They were very jealous of each other,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t live together but they didn’t seem to be able to live apart.’
‘Did Lee have a temper?’ Brian asked me.
‘Tracie was always provoking him into arguments,’ I said. ‘She’d make a saint lose it. There were times when he gave as good as he got from her in shouting matches and throwing stuff, but he never hit her.
‘Lee hated the way Tracie used to flirt with other men. It didn’t matter what they looked like or how old they were, she was man-mad. Ask Lee’s workmates, they’ll tell you what she was like. If she had a chance to pick an argument and put Lee down in front of anyone, she would. He was sick of her behaviour but he’d just storm off. They were both jealous of each other.’
That day, Ray and I left no stone unturned in making sure the police knew everything that we did about Lee’s relationship with Tracie.
Brian and Mick must have been amazed that we could recount so many rows and incidents in such detail, but it was a relief to be able to share what had been happening in our lives for the past two years. And, because Tracie’s jealousy and temper had got the better of her on so many family occasions, it was easy to remember how upset we’d all been. I told Brian that Ray, Michelle and I had never liked Tracie. There was no point in being anything other than upfront about our feelings towards her.
All the conversations I’d ever had with her had confirmed our first impressions that growing up as the product of a broken home had left her massively insecure and deeply resentful. She’d told me, the first time we’d met, that men had always let her down. It was a pattern she blamed almost entirely on her dad John, who’d married Irene in 1963 and then split from her when Tracie was eight. She said she’d never been able to shake off the feeling of rejection after he left. And she was incredibly bitter about the fact that she didn’t think he’d loved her enough to stay with Irene.
‘I think that’s why I turned into a bit of a bully at school,’ she’d told me. ‘If you hang round with people who are in control, they don’t hurt you.’
She’d told me that, as a little girl, she’d only ever dreamed about becoming a model. The reality was actually far more mundane than Tracie liked, because she’d ended up working part-time in shops after leaving Bridley Moor High School in Redditch with six CSEs. The half-baked ambition she’d had to become a nurse disappeared in a pantomime puff of smoke when she’d joined a Youth Training Scheme working with the elderly.
‘It was so sad, Maureen,’ she’d said, checking her lipstick in our sitting-room mirror one evening while she was