Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years. Jacqui Kirby
mother.
‘Around 9.30pm, or just after, but never much later. She knows how much I’d worry.’
The officer thought for a moment and then said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, if she’s not home for 10.30pm, just give us another call.’
With that, he hung up.
I was dumbstruck. Instinct told me that something was very wrong, but how could I get the police to take my fears seriously? I knew something had happened to my daughter. I picked the receiver back up and began dialling frantically around all our friends and family to see if they’d seen or heard from Colette. No one had.
I called all the hospitals in the area. Had they admitted a teenage girl? Had Colette been caught up in some dreadful accident? But I got the same answer from every A&E switchboard – there had been no reported accident concerning a girl in or around Keyworth.
By this point, I was crying. Huge teardrops streamed down my face and pooled into my hands.
Tony stood by me, ashen-white. He felt as helpless as I did but tried his best to reassure me. ‘Come on, Jacqui. You always think the worst. Everything will be OK,’ he soothed.
I wanted to believe him – to think that there was a simple explanation, but there wasn’t. I knew my daughter too well. She was my twin – the double of me. Colette wouldn’t have just wandered off somewhere on her own at night.
We stood still for a few moments. Suddenly, I said, ‘We’ve got to find her, Tony. She’s lying in a hedge somewhere – I know she is.’
The survival instinct kicked into both of us. We jolted into action. As her parents, we could do something about this.
‘Let’s get the cars and go and look for her,’ said Tony.
Soon, we were ringing around asking others to join in the search for our daughter. If the police wouldn’t help us, then we’d do it ourselves.
Tony and I called our neighbour and friend Jan. She was also the acting manageress of the hairdressing salon where Colette worked. Jan and her husband Tony came over to help us look for Colette. My aunt May also drove over in her car. In the middle of all this commotion, Mark arrived home. He was bewildered by my tears and the building sense of panic at home.
‘Colette’s missing,’ I said, tears stinging in my eyes as I mouthed the words, which made it all too real. ‘We’re all going to look for her.’
‘I’ll help,’ Mark gasped, as he grabbed his car keys and ran back to his parked car on the drive outside.
We all drove towards different parts of the village – it felt good to be proactive – but we couldn’t find Colette anywhere. We travelled along the route that she would have taken and beyond, just in case, but there was still no sign of her. It was hopeless.
By 9.30pm, I was frantic and couldn’t wait much longer. I rang the police a second time. I was in a state of true panic. My heart thumped so loudly that I thought it would leap out of my chest. I spoke to another police officer who agreed to help me.
‘We’ll send someone out,’ he promised me.
At last, I thought, we’ll find her now. But the first officer who knocked at our door told me that he was here to search our loft. ‘Just in case,’ he reasoned.
‘Why on earth would she be in the loft?’ I asked, incredulous.
Despite my protests, he strode past me, climbed the stairs and opened up the loft hatch in the landing ceiling. The officer switched on his torch and climbed up awkwardly through it. I watched numbly in disbelief as the light darted around the darkened, empty loft space above.
‘Why would she be in the loft?’ I repeated, tears of frustration welling up inside me.
This was pointless. We were wasting precious time. Colette could be anywhere, I thought. She could be hurt, crying out for me.
‘She left home perfectly happy a few hours ago,’ I insisted. This loft ‘search’ was nonsense.
Moments later, the police officer was back on the landing, dusting himself down. ‘Nothing up there but storage boxes,’ he agreed, gesturing upwards with his finger.
I was exasperated. Each minute that ticked by was another minute without my daughter, another minute with her further from me and the safety of her family.
The officer radioed the information back to police headquarters, who agreed to send backup. It was midnight by the time four uniformed officers arrived at our home with two sniffer dogs. They planned to walk with the police dogs towards the bottom of Nicker Hill, which was five minutes’ walk from our home in Normanton Lane.
‘Wait,’ I said, grabbing the nearest coat, ‘I’m coming with you.’
I pulled on the coat, a thin, lime-green leather-look raincoat. It was my favourite coat but now it was associated with the horrors of searching for my daughter. I was frozen with both cold and fear as I followed the officers and searched nearby fields.
My mind was racing. I was panic-stricken. My throat was tight and dry and I felt sick as we walked along the darkened road. I kept repeating the same thing to myself over and over again: ‘She’s lying in a hedge bottom somewhere. She’s dead. I just know she is. Colette wouldn’t put us through this.’
My teeth chattered with fear as I spoke. My whole body began to shake uncontrollably.
‘We must find her. Please, God, help us find my baby,’ I kept repeating like a prayer.
I was freezing and crying, unable to get the thought out of my head that Colette was lying dead somewhere. I begged the officers to find her.
Although it was still a full moon, the light had faded hours before, making the search almost impossible.
‘We’re going to have to stop and continue with it tomorrow,’ a senior officer announced. He felt so uncomfortable with his own announcement that he was barely able to look me in the eye.
Then he asked me about Colette’s friends. How could I be certain that she hadn’t stopped off somewhere? They asked about Colette’s friend Sarah Newman, whose parents ran the Golden Fleece pub in Upper Broughton, outside the village.
‘Do you think that she might have strolled over there?’ the officer asked.
‘I am telling you, I know my daughter,’ I sobbed. ‘There is no way that she would have walked across fields and a motorway to get there. Why would she?’
The police told me to make the call anyway, so I did. It was the early hours of the morning when the phone rang at the Golden Fleece pub, but I remember that call as if it was yesterday. Sarah’s mother answered and went to wake her sleeping daughter. But Sarah hadn’t seen or heard from Colette that night – it appeared that no one had. It was as though my daughter had simply vanished off the face of the earth.
Instead, weary with both mental and emotional exhaustion, I returned home and hung my damp raincoat back on the cloakroom peg. I never wore my favourite coat again.
By this time, Colette’s boyfriend had arrived at our house. Russell was in a dreadful state and wanted to stay with us throughout the night in case we heard any news.
Tony, Mark, Russell and I stood in a daze; the stark kitchen light highlighted the growing fear and worry on our faces. In a matter of hours, we had been drawn into a living nightmare, a torturous waiting game that could not even begin to come to an end until first light.
We did wait. We waited for Colette to walk in the front door. We waited for a phone call that never came. Then, in those last few hours, we sat waiting for the sun to rise once more and cast light on Colette’s sudden disappearance.
I heard the sound of a van pull up outside. I dashed to the front door, hoping that it was the police bringing her home. But it was the milkman. It was 5am,