Deadly Divorces (14 page)

Whatever the trigger, an immense, overpowering wave of anger swept through him as his soon-to-be ex-wife sat at her dressing table with her back to him. Raising himself to his feet, he slid open a bedside drawer and pulled out a 12-cm knife that had been kept there ever since a burglary some years before. Making his way silently around the foot of the bed, he came up behind his wife and there was a brief moment when their eyes met. If Christopher had stopped then, snapping out of whatever terrible frenzy had taken over him, how different would life be now for himself, for his children and for Roger Flint? Instead, a part inside of him broke that night which propelled him onwards. As Ali Lumsden turned from the dressing table
mirror and tried to stand, her husband brought the knife down. Again, and again, and again…

When the phone rang at 10.40pm on 16 March 2005 in Gawsworth Hall, a beautiful half-timbered Tudor stately home in Macclesfield, Cheshire, the First Lady of the manor, Elizabeth Richards, was surprised to hear her normally composed brother sounding almost incoherent. When she finally managed to understand what Christopher Lumsden was telling her – ‘I think I have killed Alison’ – her initial confusion turned to horror.

Leaving their son Rupert at home, Elizabeth and her husband Timothy immediately got into the car and drove straight to Bowdon. Navigating the dark country roads, the same thoughts kept going round their heads. Surely this would turn out to be some ghastly mistake. Surely there’d be some reasonable explanation. Pulling up outside the house at 11.10pm, they decided Timothy would stay in the car while his anxious wife went in to confront her brother.

Always an imposing house, Oakleigh was eerily quiet and apart from a glimmer of light in the hallway, in total darkness. Not knowing what to expect, Elizabeth rang the bell. The sound echoed in the unnatural stillness of the March night. Bending down, she opened the flap of the letterbox. ‘Christopher,’ she called sharply. Finally, the door
was opened. In the hallway stood Christopher Lumsden, renowned financial lawyer, his face deathly white, his body shaking. All hope of this being some terrible misunderstanding disappeared as Elizabeth’s gaze passed over her brother’s pyjamas. They were soaked with blood.

As Christopher slumped onto a chair in the hall, Elizabeth tried to find out what had gone on but her brother, normally so eloquent, was too traumatised to make much sense. ‘Is she dead?’ she asked him urgently. ‘I don’t know’ was his barely coherent reply. Filled with trepidation, she made her way up the stairs to the main bedroom. At the doorway she hesitated. There are some sights that you know will stay with you forever. For Elizabeth Richards, this would be one of them. Lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the bedroom was her
sister-in
-law Alison. One glance at her savagely torn neck was enough to convince her that she was dead.

In a state of shock Elizabeth Richards, one of the leading lights in Cheshire’s social scene, dialled 999. Then she went out of the house to break the news to her husband, who was still sitting in the car unaware that their family lives had changed forever. ‘Alison’s dead.’ Strange how two words can have such a shattering effect.

Christopher Lumsden was still sitting in the hallway when his sister burst in from the outer porch with her husband. While so much of that night remains a nightmarish blur, Timothy Richards will never forget his
first sight of his brother-in-law. ‘He was totally motionless, clearly totally traumatised and clearly immensely depressed – it was quite apparent that one should not really speak to him at that point. There was nothing one could say,’ he would later remark. Instead, Timothy placed his hand fleetingly on Christopher’s head in a gentle gesture of support. There was literally nothing else he could think of to do.

On 10 February 2006, a crumpled, shaken Christopher Lumsden hoisted himself painfully to his feet to hear a jury at Manchester Crown Court clear him of murder but declare him guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Clearly distressed, the once proud lawyer asked to say a few words before sentencing was pronounced in the hope that he could offer a ‘crumb of comfort’ to friends and family. ‘If there is anything I could do to atone for this appalling tragedy or even to reduce by a small amount the anguish, pain and suffering I have caused, I would do it,’ he croaked, choking back the tears.

Christopher Lumsden, who has always maintained he has no memory of the moment he actually killed his wife, received a sentence of five years. While his physical release is not far off, the mental torment of what he did to the woman he calls ‘my angel’ will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Sometimes the cruellest prison is that of our own minds.

T
ina Baker let out a long, drawn-out sigh and smoothed a lock of unruly curly black hair back from her face. It was 1998 and she’d just talked to yet another friend who’d passed on a message from her husband Martin. ‘He really wants you back, Tina,’ the friend had told her. ‘He says you’re the best thing in his life.’

It was all very well him being all lovey-dovey now, Tina reflected angrily. He hadn’t been that way when they’d been living together and he was picking at everything she did, trying to control where she went, who she talked to, what she spent. And would someone who thought you were the light of his life lose their temper with you quite so quickly, saying all kinds of horrible things?

But then Tina couldn’t help remembering how kind he’d seemed when they’d first met through a lonely hearts ad some years earlier Martin had placed in a magazine. Although he was a decade older than she herself and his weather-beaten face bore the telltale lines of past disappointments, Martin – or Jed, as he was known to most people – had immediately struck her as a genuine person who said what he meant. Though not exactly an oil painting, with his thin, straggly hair and watery blue eyes, once they got to know each other better and the two discovered a mutual passion for animals, Tina’s feelings had gradually deepened into love.

They’d married in May 1996 and at first their joint vision of running a farm and keeping livestock had been enough to keep them together. The day they signed the contract on a 14-acre,
£
52,000 plot of land that they transformed into Brookfield Farm, in Pennypot Lane, Chobham, Surrey, had been one of the happiest of their lives. Though Martin worked as a machinist at a local engineering company, he’d always wanted to raise livestock, particularly pigs, and Tina just loved any animals, no matter what kind, so building their own farm was the realisation of a dream for both of them.

But, as any relationships expert will tell you, one shared goal isn’t enough to keep together a couple with little else in common. Quite soon after they’d walked down the aisle Tina had started to question her wisdom in marrying
Martin. He’d been married before and she worried that the bitterness with which he and his ex-wife had parted didn’t bode well for the future of their own relationship. She soon found the 10-year age gap more of a problem than she’d first thought it to be, too. In her mid-thirties when they married, she was still a relatively young woman and determined to get the most out of life, but Martin seemed much more set in his ways. She’d become increasingly unhappy in her marriage and had eventually walked out on her husband in 1998, leaving him in the Egham home they’d shared near to their beloved farm.

But then Martin had started his campaign to try to win her back, calling her friends and family and asking them to pass on messages telling her how much he missed her. He even got his own friends involved to plead on his behalf. Tina slowly found herself softening. Perhaps she’d been too hasty in leaving Martin. He obviously did really love her or he wouldn’t be doing so much to win her back. She decided to give the marriage one more chance. It was to prove a very costly mistake.

Together again, the relationship soon settled back into the old, destructive patterns. Tina, naturally a more extrovert, sociable person than her husband, felt stifled by a marriage that felt stale and almost elderly. Coming up to 40, she’d started doing the same as most people confronted by a milestone birthday: taking stock of where she was and asking herself whether this was where she wanted to be. Projecting
forwards ten years, did she really want to be approaching 50 and still in this floundering, unsatisfying relationship?

But she was determined to stick it out, not wanting to give up on either Martin or the animals they shared. The doubts refused to go away, however. Then, in May 2002, when Tina was 41, she went out to a school reunion, where she met Derek Poplett. Derek had been an old friend of hers from school. He was her own age, he was part of her history and he made her laugh. Being with Derek made Tina realise all the things she’d been missing out on during her marriage to Martin.

At home things went from bad to worse. Almost as if he could sense her pulling away from him, Martin became ever more controlling. ‘What have you done with that money you withdrew from the bank?’ he’d demand, holding her accountable for every last penny. They argued more often and said things they both regretted. Increasingly Tina became convinced she couldn’t stay in her marriage. ‘We never have fun any more,’ she tried to explain to her husband. ‘I feel like life is passing me by.’

Now past the 40 watershed, Tina felt she didn’t have time to sit around, hoping against hope that her relationship with Martin would miraculously improve. In Derek Poplett she’d stumbled across an opportunity for a second chance of happiness. How could she live with herself if she didn’t grasp it? But then again Martin was her husband and no matter how much they fought, she still felt
guilty about deserting him plus she worried what would happen to the farm she’d worked towards all her life if the two of them should split.

In every failing relationship there exists a twilight zone, an agonising period of limbo, where the person who wants to leave has already moved out in their mind, but remains bodily in the marital home. There, but not quite present, they inhabit their old life like a still-living ghost. While Tina tried to summon up the courage to finally walk out on her marriage, her relationship with Martin became increasingly strained.

On 17 June 2002 everything came to a head. It started when Tina and Martin discovered that four out of their most recent litter of puppies had died. ‘That’s your fault,’ Martin accused her. ‘You’ve been feeding them duck eggs and you’ve given them salmonella.’ For Tina, who’d adored the cute little pups with their barely open eyes and fluffy cotton-wool fur, his remarks were doubly cruel. Not only was she grieving for the loss of the animals but now she also carried the guilt of knowing she might have contributed to their death. ‘I don’t see how you can be so sure of that,’ she argued, gazing at the lifeless little furry bodies with
tear-filled
eyes. ‘We don’t know exactly what killed them, nobody does.’ But Martin refused to back down.

Tina realised then she’d had enough. If she stayed with Martin she’d always be left feeling like it was her fault when things went wrong. She wanted a relationship built
on mutual comfort and support and she no longer believed Martin was capable of giving it to her. That evening she packed her things and left the Egham house to move in with her parents in nearby Shepperton. This time she would never return.

As before when she’d left, Martin Baker was unable to accept his wife walking out on him. She had to come back, he told people. He loved her, they had a life together, a business. As a man who very much needed to feel in control he found it almost impossible to reconcile himself to the fact that Tina had gone and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Even tending the animals and particularly feeding his pigs, which usually gave him a feeling of wellbeing, failed to calm his turbulent emotions. Once again he left repeated messages on her mobile and bombarded friends with calls asking whether they’d seen her or begging them to intervene on his behalf.

When he discovered Tina was seeing Derek Poplett at weekends, Martin’s feelings turned from hurt and denial to pure rage. It wasn’t just the thought of his wife with another man that so infuriated him, although the very idea of it turned his stomach, it was also the very real possibility that he might lose his farm. If he and Tina divorced, he might end up having to sell the land and the livestock. Even worse was the idea that somehow he’d have to hand it over to Tina and her new boyfriend, and everything for which he’d worked so hard would just fall into the lap of that conniving usurper.

‘What does she see in that loser?’ he’d rail at his friends. ‘He’s nothing but a long-haired misfit!’ The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. The only thing he could do would be to find Tina and make her sign an agreement to give up her claim to the farm and have her name taken off the deeds.

On 6 July he tracked Tina down to Derek Poplett’s home in Sunbury-on-Thames, where he confronted his estranged wife and her reviled new lover. But if he hoped intimidation tactics would persuade Tina to sign away her rights to the farm, he was wrong. She loved that land and the animals. Besides, half of it all was rightfully hers. ‘I’m sorry, Jed. I want a divorce,’ she told him. ‘And I’m not giving up my land.’

Martin Baker fumed. How could it be right that a man could work hard all his life and be faced, at the age of 51, with the prospect of losing it all? Why were women so fickle, so deceitful and so manipulative? His first wife, Gillian, had been the same, he reflected angrily. Never giving him the respect he deserved, always doing things to make him angry. It seemed incredible to him now that he’d let himself be duped again. When Tina had agreed to marry him he’d been the happiest man in the world and now, just six years on, he was facing a second acrimonious and costly divorce.

The more he thought about it the more unfair it seemed to him. He couldn’t sleep because of the images that crowded his brain of Tina and her lover living it up on the
proceeds of his labour, or, worse still, somehow taking the farm from him and running it themselves. The thought of the pair of them looking after his animals burned across his mind like acid. He had to stop it.

On Monday, 8 July 2002, Tina got ready as usual to go to the farm to feed the animals. As Martin worked at the engineering firm during the day, she generally did the daytime shift and he looked after the early mornings and evenings. She was seen leaving Derek Poplett’s house in Sunbury – a fit, active woman with dark, curly hair and a new sparkle in her eye that came from knowing that it was the start of summer and she was loved, and that life was full of new possibilities. Later that day she was due to meet Derek and was then expected for dinner at her parents’ in Shepperton. For 41-year-old Tina things were falling into place and she was so relieved she’d taken the chance of starting afresh. Closing the door behind her, she set off out into a world that seemed alive with potential.

That was the last reported sighting of Tina Baker.

Later that same day Fiona Cooper went to tend to her horse in a field near to the Bakers’ farm in Pennypot Lane. It was a typical English summer’s day with the wild blackberry bushes that lined the potholed path buzzing with bees and muted sunshine filtering through the leaves of the taller trees. Lulled into a sense of calm by the languid summer air, Fiona was surprised to come across Martin Baker at his farm and to notice how nervy and jittery he
seemed. Never particularly at ease in company, he appeared particularly agitated and she formed the distinct impression that he couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

‘Some people are coming over any minute to buy some pigs,’ he told her impatiently. Suit yourself, she thought, as she walked off, determined not to let the incident spoil her day. It was only afterwards that something happened to make her think more carefully about Martin’s strange behaviour and remember how he’d seemed to be ushering her away. Fiona learned that Tina Baker had quite simply disappeared on that very Monday when she’d been enjoying the peace of the countryside and the silky feel of the horse’s gleaming fur under her hand.

She didn’t turn up to meet new boyfriend Derek Poplett, nor did she join her parents for dinner. She never returned to pick up her bankcards or her passport, or to be reunited with her faithful Alsatian Samson from whom she was virtually inseparable. There was no sign of her red Vauxhall Astra with the licence plate G392 VVX.

Tina had just vanished.

Questioned about his estranged wife’s disappearance, at first Martin Baker told police she must have run off. She’d done it before, he said, disappearing for a couple of weeks without saying where she was and he’d had to trace her by calling all the numbers on her mobile phone bill. She’d obviously decided to pull the same trick again. But when Tina failed to access her bank account or come back for
her dog, it became increasingly clear that this was not some impulse getaway. Something sinister had happened to her and police were increasingly sure that Martin knew something about it.

Despite having pestered Tina since she walked out in him the previous month, Martin suddenly quit all attempts to get in touch with her from 8 July onwards. If he really thought she’d done a bunk, wouldn’t he have tried to find her? It didn’t make sense. Typically, he who liked to keep his business to himself and hated to feel that he was losing control of any situation naturally didn’t take kindly to being questioned by the police. ‘You’ll be digging up my patio next!’ he snapped.

Pale from sleepless nights and their faces etched with worry, Tina’s parents Geoff and Jean Doyle made endless enquiries and appeals for news of their daughter. It was so unlike her to put them through any needless emotional trauma. They just knew something terrible had happened. Martin, meanwhile, continued to protest that he knew nothing about Tina’s whereabouts or what could have befallen her. However, a series of events would soon cast serious doubts on his professions of innocence.

First he had denied being at the farm on 8 July except for an early morning visit to feed the animals. He’d been at work as usual, he told police. And yet Fiona Cooper had seen him there and, according to the engineering company for whom he worked, he’d broken the machine he was
working on that day and had been sent home early. Did Tina Baker make it as far as the farm to find her estranged husband already there?

Phone records showed a series of calls made on 8 July from the phone Martin Baker habitually used. One from the vicinity of the farm and one much later at night to Herbie, a friend of his who ran a scrap metal business – Station Breakers in Hayes. Baker denied he’d even had the phone or made the calls. ‘I left the phone at the farm,’ he claimed. ‘Tina must have made the calls.’ Things were not looking good for Martin Baker but despite thorough searches, there was no body and no evidence of any crime being committed. As the weeks went on, police despaired of ever getting close to the truth about what had happened to Tina.