Deadly Divorces (16 page)

What the authorities didn’t know – and Julia tried to block out – was that Alan’s rage was already out of control. At the time of the Injunction hearing, it would later transpire that he had already visited websites giving specific
instructions on how to carry out a murder. By the autumn of 2003, Julia’s nerves were totally frayed. All she thought about, dreamed about, was getting a fresh start away from the house, away from all ties with Alan. She had been momentarily relieved when she’d found out that Alan had a new girlfriend, a woman named Penny Cook, with whom he was living in Bromsash, Ross-on-Wye. ‘At least now he’ll leave you alone,’ friends told her.

But Julia knew Alan’s obsession wouldn’t allow that to happen. It might have bought her a little time while he readjusted to his new circumstances, but ultimately it wouldn’t save her. Alan had vowed to come for her, and she knew he would carry his threat through. It was just a question of whether she could stop him.

When Old Hallowes, the house the Pembertons had built to grow old in, was put on the market by order of the Divorce Court, Julia was filled with conflicting emotions. On the one hand the house had been her children’s home and the investment of so many of her and Alan’s dreams. But on the other hand, its very air was choked with unpleasant memories, its rooms rank with the smell of fear. Selling the house meant a new start for her, a new home whose rooms didn’t bear Alan’s imprint, where he couldn’t lay claim to the bricks, the mortar, even the inhabitants themselves. By this stage Laura had just started her first term at Cambridge University so it was just Julia and Will left. The Slanting Hill house had been given an
impressive
£
975,000 price tag. Whatever deal was struck, Julia would have enough for a place of her own in which to start over again.

On the other hand, 48-year-old Alan was furious when he learned the house was on the market. The fact that it was the Divorce Court that had instituted the sale rather than his estranged wife made no difference to his warped thinking. In his head this was yet another instance of Julia wresting control from him. It was his house, yet it was being sold without his permission. The whole situation was intolerable, and in the stone-and-timber barn conversion he now shared with new love Penny Cook, Alan Pemberton started to plot his revenge.

When Penny first met the financier, she’d thought him ‘the nicest person’ she had ever met, witty, intelligent and caring, but now certain things about him started to make her feel slightly uncomfortable. She understood how a person could feel bitter if they’d been kicked out of the house they’d lovingly built without even a possibility of a second chance, as Alan said had happened to him. But recently he seemed unable to think of little else. He was also depressed by the threat of a
£
361,000 lawsuit from a ex-employee, but it was his estranged wife who was constantly at the forefront of his thoughts. Penny wished he’d just focus on something different – she was sure they could have a great future together if he’d just let go a little bit of the past. But letting go had never been one of Alan’s strong points.

Tuesday, 18 November 2003 didn’t have the makings of a particularly memorable day. In Hermitage, Will and Julia went about the normal routine they’d fallen into since it had been just the two of them in the house. Even though the undercurrent of menace created by Alan’s threats was never far from the surface of their lives, they’d become expert at shutting it off so it didn’t interfere with the essential business of school and work.

Over in Ross-on-Wye, however, events were not entirely following the usual pattern. That morning Penny Cook, a legal practice manager, had left for work as usual, leaving Alan behind in bed. When he got up, Alan was restless. Unusually for him, he didn’t seem able to concentrate on work. Instead, he just gazed out the window without really seeing the beautiful view of the lake and the acres of garden. Then he reread the article in the local paper that he’d already looked at so many times before. It was a report on a West Berkshire man who’d carried out a triple shooting, killing his girlfriend, daughter and finally himself. What would it feel like, Alan wondered, to see that ultimate fear in another person’s eyes and then pull the trigger?

Putting the paper down, he made his way to the locked cabinet which still contained the hunting guns once owned by Penny’s ex-husband. Using the key he’d taken earlier, Alan unlocked the little door and reached inside to pull out a 12-gauge shotgun used for clay pigeon shooting. He’d done a fair bit of shooting himself, but all the same it
took him a few seconds to adjust to the weight of the gun, the sheer solid bulk of it. A short while later, he sat down with paper and pen to write a note. But this was no casual reminder to a lover, no scribbled explanation of where he was going or when he’d be back.

Did the words come easily to Alan, or did he stare off into space, chewing the end of the pen as he tried to articulate the thoughts whirring round inside his brain? No one will ever know. When Penny finally came across the letter and read Alan’s words, it was all too late. ‘By the time you read this I will have undertaken a callous act, for which I know I will be severely berated,’ he had written. ‘No one quite knows the grief and shock I have suffered as a result of the action of my darling wife. My need for revenge is overpowering. As I discussed, I have become obsessed.’

At some point that Tuesday afternoon, he slung the shotgun into the boot of his Mercedes and set off for his
£
1,000-a-year golf club. Golf always seemed to relax him. There was something about being outside amid the rolling, immaculately kept lawns with nothing to think about but the course of the little white ball, that appealed to his sense of order and control. Plus it really helped focus his mind.

At the club that day other players later reported him being in a ‘happy, jokey’ mood as he made his way round the course. He didn’t seem unduly preoccupied or intense and certainly not like a man with murder on his mind. It just goes to show how deceptive appearances can be.

Alan left the golf club at around 6.30pm. He was due to pick up his son Will for a driving lesson half an hour later, so he just had time to slip into a nearby pub for a quick pint of cider. Other drinkers might easily have supposed that the well dressed, outwardly calm man at the bar that night was a well-to-do businessman on his way home after a casual meeting or indeed a game of golf. They could never have suspected that here was someone who knew he was quite possibly having the very last drink of his life.

Since Alan was legally prohibited from going near his house, he’d got into the habit of picking Will up from further along the road. But this time he turned up at the house itself. Julia and Will froze as the first bangs resounded from the timber framed front door. They didn’t need to hear the words he was yelling to know that Alan was in an ugly mood. Will – by now 17 – had no doubt his mother was his dad’s intended target. But, as long as he could keep the two apart, he reasoned, then Julia would be safe.

With adrenaline and fear simultaneously pumping round his system, Will Pemberton stepped outside the front door and positioned himself in front of it, blocking his father’s path. With any luck he could reason with him, perhaps persuade him to get in the car for his lesson and get them both well away from the house and his mother. If he had read what Alan had written in the note left behind at Penny Cook’s Ross-on-Wye home, he would not have felt so confident. ‘I hope William does nothing stupid,’ it said.

But Alan was now beyond reason. He had waited over a year for his revenge, imagining over and over how it would feel to see Julia cowering in front of him, finally realising the enormity of what she’d done to him. Everything was in order. He wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get in the way of him and his intended quarry. Levelling the shotgun, he fired two shots into his son’s chest at point blank range. Will, a slight adolescent on the cusp of manhood, slumped to the ground in a blaze of pain and shock.

Alan, however, had already set off round the side of the house without stopping to find out how badly his son was hurt. By now just one thing was on his mind: killing Julia. Through his pain, Will saw his father disappear round the side of the house. He knew he was going to hunt down his mother and he knew he had to try to stop him. Staggering to his feet, he followed after him. ‘Stop!’ he cried out.

Though once a loving father, proud of his gifted children’s achievements, Alan Pemberton turned round and pumped three more shots into his son’s chest, stomach and arm. Will fell dead to the ground. How pure a hatred must be to cause a person to kill the very ones they love most just because they stand in their way. And how strong must be the desire for revenge if it overturns the deep-rooted parental urge to protect your young. But when Alan began shooting his way into the house, he was no longer a father, no longer a husband. He was a killer now, and nothing was going to stop him.

Poor terrified Julia had grabbed the phone to dial 999 as soon as she’d heard the first bangs on the door at 7.11pm. While Will had gone outside to remonstrate with his father, she’d begun explaining to the operator what was happening. Remember she’d previously been assured that her address had been flagged up at the police station and that officers would be on the scene within 10 minutes of her making an emergency call? She must have been hoping against hope that Will could keep his father contained for the few minutes until the police arrived. But that hope disappeared with the first blast from the shotgun. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, he has hurt my son!’ she screamed to the operator near the beginning of what would be a harrowing,
16-minute
call. Then: ‘Please come quickly, he has let off shots and fired through the window.’

In the meantime, desperate with fear and worry about her son, she hid in the downstairs storeroom, hoping it might afford her some protection. Still the police didn’t arrive. More shots were fired. ‘He’s killed my son!’ The cry tore from Julia like a piece of her heart being ripped out. ‘Oh my God!’ Crouching in the storeroom, unable to lock the door from the inside, she knew her own fate was sealed. If Alan had killed Will, he was not going to let anything stop him getting her too.

‘We’ve got people coming up,’ the operator told her in a futile attempt to reassure the terrified woman. But Julia knew nothing was going to save her. ‘He’s coming through
the door – oh God, I’ve got about one minute before I die!’ Loud bangs were heard in the background as Alan Pemberton approached the cupboard where his wife cowered in fear, the phone still in her hand. ‘He’s coming now!’ Julia gasped. Alan burst through the door, his rage by now a hot, white light leading him on to what he had to do. ‘You f*****g whore!’ he yelled at his sobbing wife. Then he raised his shotgun and fired four times.

After Julia was dead, a heavy silence fell over the house. Alan, his ears still ringing from the blasts and from the sound of blood hammering in his ears, made his way to the stairway. Who knows what went through his mind as he sat down and prepared for the last, inevitable act in his carefully crafted plan. Did he spare a moment of regret for the son, teetering on the brink of adulthood, who’d died so bravely protecting his mother? And did he wonder how a marriage started out with such hope could have gone so horribly, tragically wrong, or how the woman he’d sworn to love forever could now be lying dead in a pool of blood? Of course no one can ever be sure. The only thing we know for certain is that, after killing his son and wife, Alan Pemberton calmly placed the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and fired once, instantly dying from a single shot to the head.

Far from being on the scene within 10 minutes of Julia picking up the phone, it was another 24 minutes before an unarmed team of police officers was dispatched. Even then,
they had trouble locating the Pemberton’s newly built home. As they pulled up outside the house, they spotted Will’s body lying on the gravel drive. Despite attempts to give first aid, it was obvious he was dead. The officers then had to wait until an armed unit arrived to give back up, but it would still be another 6 hours before they were sufficiently convinced it was safe to enter the house. Inside they found the bodies of Julia and Alan, dead even before the first officers arrived on the scene.

How does a family rebuild itself after such a tragedy? How much time must elapse before the twin forces of passion and of rage that ripped them apart are once more fettered by everyday life? Julia’s family, and particularly her brother, Frank Mullane, has thrown itself into campaigning for reforms in the way the police handle domestic violence. They have won a domestic homicide review into the killings in the hope that further investigation will help prevent the same thing happening in the future.

Alan’s family is still trying to come to terms with what he did, and why, clinging to the image of him as a loving family man, driven over the edge by accusations of abuse and the prospect of losing everything he loved. Penny Cook – who found Alan’s farewell letter, which included the comment that he’d hired a hit man to carry out the murder if he should fail – was left battling her own demons after her lover died. Though Alan had made sure she would be well provided for through his life insurance policy, she
found herself haunted by unanswered questions. Could she have done more to prevent what happened? Should she have seen how fixated he was becoming? Why didn’t she realise how dangerous he was?

What of Laura, who was the only one of the immediate family to escape the bloodbath? After burying her mum and brother one day, and her dad the next, she was left struggling to make sense of a crime that had taken every memory she’d ever had and torn it to shreds, the pieces swirling around her in the dead air like dust.

‘We were a loving family,’ she insisted, trying to claw back some fragment of what had been so cruelly taken from her. ‘Words cannot express how I feel or how much I miss them.’

G
uy forced himself to look up. His eyes widened with shock as he saw the gun pointing at him. He didn’t understand, couldn’t take in what he saw. His last thought, bizarrely, was that the silencer was as big as the gun.

The girl slipped into the room. She was tiny with large brown eyes. She looked at the body on the floor and then at the man slipping the gun back into the waistband of his jeans. The expression on her face was of regret, sorrow and bewilderment. It passed quickly and she turned to Boy. ‘Come on, Tilac, let’s go,’ he said. She gave him a quick, lop-sided smile and took his hand as they left the room.

As Toby Charnaud typed the last lines of what would turn out to be a top-prize winning short story, he had mixed feelings. On one hand he was pleased with how the story had turned out. He’d written it for a short story competition being run by a Bangkok magazine and it conveyed exactly the right tone of romantic wistfulness combined with tension and a brutal twist at the end. On the other hand, writing the story of a Western man who’d fallen in love with a beautiful Thai bar girl and given up everything to marry her only to realise she could never be loyal to him, brought up some painful memories.

So many of his personal feelings and experiences had been poured into that tale of a cross-cultural marriage borne out of optimism and love that ended in bitterness and betrayal. Still, he reflected, as he typed out the title ‘Rainfall’ on the coversheet, at least the ending – in which the wife had the hero killed – wasn’t autobiographical. He and his own Thai ex-wife might still be embroiled in petty disputes over their divorce settlement and custody of their son Daniel, but thankfully their arguments stopped short of murder.

As Toby carefully slid the sheaf of papers on which his story was typed into the manilla envelope, like every aspiring writer he hoped his words would ring true for his readers. He wanted the characters he’d created to come to life on the page – their dialogue plausible, their actions credible. And he wanted readers to be able to relate to the feelings he wrote about and to imagine just how easily
passion could turn poisonous. What he could never have imagined was just how sickeningly real his fictional creation would turn out to be.

For years now the Thai mail-order bride phenomenon has been big news and the older British man with the young Thai wife on his arm has become a comedy staple on TV programmes such as
Little Britain
. The Thais, too, have their own ways of mocking the male ‘farangs’ (white foreigners) who believe true happiness can be found for the price of an internet dating site subscription. The British Embassy in Bangkok processes around 70 applications a week from Britons wanting to marry Thai nationals – and most of these couples involve a considerable age difference, not to mention the sizeable cultural gulf created by a union where the two partners don’t even speak the same language.

But the marriage of Toby Charnaud and Pannada Laoruang seemed to buck all the stereotypes. There was no massive age gap; the couple had had a proper courtship period. Above all, they were in love. When Toby first caught sight of Pannada in a bar in the Thai capital Bangkok, he was smitten. It was 1997 and, like thousands of adventurous Britons, the 33-year-old Chippenham man was enjoying a holiday in the exotic paradise of Thailand, Land of Smiles. Over the last decade he’d travelled all over the world –
America, Australia, Africa as well as Asia – meeting all kinds of people but there was something about the petite Thai girl working in the seedy Bangkok bar that drew him to her. When she came over to talk to him, there was a definite spark that made him forget the dinginess of the surroundings and the difficulties in communicating. All he saw was her soft brown eyes and the long shiny black hair that reflected the coloured lights from the bar.

Over the next few days, Toby and Pannada – known as ‘Som’, which means orange, to her friends and family – saw a lot of each other and by the time he went back to England, he felt a tug at leaving Thailand that he’d never experienced in the other exotic destinations he’d visited. Part of it was the country itself, the bustling city streets that gave out eventually to green jungles leading to
palm-fringed
white sandy beaches that seemed never-ending. But the other part was Pannada. Somehow the waif-like Thai girl with the fragile features had got under his skin. He just didn’t want to leave her.

Back in the UK, thoughts of her weighed heavily on his mind. No matter how much he tried to tell himself it was just a holiday romance and couldn’t go any further, he couldn’t shake off the memories of the time they’d shared. Toby Charnaud, a burly, stocky former public schoolboy, was a man’s man. Heavily into sport, he’d gone to agricultural college and then helped his parents run their prosperous Wiltshire farm. His was a masculine, practical,
very English world. He’d never met anyone quite like exotic, dainty Pannada. Soon he was making plans to go back and see her, and in 1997 the couple were married in an exotic Thai wedding.

Most newly weds face their new lives with a certain amount of trepidation mixed with the excitement. How will commitment affect their relationship? What subtle alterations will marriage make to their daily lives? But when a marriage involves huge life changes for one or both partners, the anxiety becomes a hundred times worse. While Toby knew he was in love with his new bride, he was apprehensive about bringing her back to the Wiltshire village of West Kington with him. He knew his family – parents Jeremy and Sarah, plus his two sisters Hannah and Martha and brother Matt – would welcome anyone he loved into their lives. Nevertheless, it would be a massive culture shock for Pannada. She was leaving behind her family, her roots, everything familiar. Was it too much to ask of her?

On the surface of things, Pannada was getting the kind of opportunity girls in her position could only dream of. She had a man who adored her and could offer a life of luxury, such as she’d never imagined. Toby lived in a
6-bedroom
manor house with stables and paddocks. For a girl from a poor Thai family, who’d been facing a future working in bars, vying with ever-younger girls to attract the attention of the male clientele, it was the stuff of fairytales. But bringing Pannada back to Wiltshire was like
trying to grow an orchid in a daisy patch. The Charnaud family all tried their best to make the young Thai woman feel at home, but the unruffled pace of rural English life was in alien contrast to the adrenaline-laced bustle of the Bangkok streets. The relentless grey of the English weather weighed heavily on a spirit cultivated in the tropical warmth of the sultry Thai sunshine.

For two years, Toby Charnaud and his wife – now known to all as Som – tried hard to slot into the
upper-class
farming community in which Toby had been born and raised. He continued to run the family farm while she got a job in a nursery. But village life can be tough on outsiders, particularly where there’s a language barrier as well, and although the couple made a few friends locally, they never really felt fully at home together. Alone in her sumptuous home, surrounded by rolling green lawns and mellow brick outbuildings, Som often felt that life as she knew it was going on somewhere else. The centuries-old manor house, with its vast, open fireplaces and wide oak floorboards, seemed to creak with a history pointedly not her own.

Som and Toby were keen to start a family. Nearly 30, she had already left it late by Thai standards, but she dreamed of bringing up a child under the familiar blue canopy of the Thai sky, surrounded by family and all that was familiar. ‘I want to go home, Toby,’ she told him, her shiny brown eyes gazing intently into his. ‘I want to go back to
Thailand.’ Toby, who’d travelled extensively all his life and understood the way a place could get under your skin, wasn’t frightened by the idea of moving abroad. He loved his wife, he could see she’d made an effort to fit into his life. Now it was his turn to try to fit into hers.

In 1999 he sold his house in the UK. If they were going to begin a new life, he wanted to do it properly, with money behind them. They decided on moving to Hua Hin, an older-style beach resort 200 kilometres south of Bangkok on the West Coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Unlike some of the trendier Thai resorts, Hua Hin isn’t known for its pumping rave music or all-night party scene. True, it boasts plenty of bars and restaurants, but they tend to attract an older, more settled type of visitor than better known rivals such as Koh Samui and Phuket. As an active fishing port, it has the year-round buzz of a working Thai town combined with the holiday feel of an upmarket resort.

Everything, from the Thai massages available on the long white sandy beach to the grand colonial architecture of some of the buildings, gives Hua Hin an air of laidback, understated luxury. And for keen golfer Toby Charnaud, the fact that it boasted 8 world-class golf courses within a
30-kilometre
radius just added to the appeal. Surrounded by spectacular national parks with waterfalls, temples and jungle scenery, Hua Hin couldn’t have been further removed from sleepy West Kington. Toby and Som believed it could offer them the new start they were hoping for. With a sense of
true optimism, mixed with a healthy dose of apprehension, they bought a bar-restaurant complex on the beach. With Som’s bar experience, they were confident they could make a go of the new business. For Toby, used to the punishing hours of farm management, the idea of a lazy round of golf in the afternoon followed by an evening socialising with the regulars in his own bar was seductively attractive.

For a while, it looked as though Hua Hin would be the paradise they’d been hoping for. The Rainbow Bar soon attracted a circle of regular expat clients and Toby became a popular member of the Handicap Committee at the Hua Hin Golfing Society. More importantly, Som was soon pregnant with their much wanted son, Daniel, who was born a year after their move to Thailand. The place abounds with horror stories of Westerners who fall in love with this most beautiful country – The Land of Smiles – and invest everything trying to make a life there only to end up losing the lot. Toby Charnaud, it seemed, was to be the exception. Unassuming and quiet, he nevertheless had a gentle humour that won him many friends in the town. People knew him as the kind of man who was just impossible to dislike. He had his golfing buddies, his regular bar customers, his lovely wife and now he had a son he completely and utterly adored. Really, he seemed to have cracked it. But life can sometimes have a habit of sneaking nasty surprises into even the sunniest of situations.

For the first time Som started to pull away from her
husband. She was living the life she’d always dreamed of with her son, her husband and a thriving business, but somehow it wasn’t quite enough for the young, attractive woman. Part of her craved the kind of thrills her staidly prosperous new life couldn’t provide. Unfortunately for her, she found what she was looking for in gambling.

Gambling is officially illegal in Thailand but that doesn’t stop it being one of the most popular pastimes for a great many Thai adults. While some trek over the borders to play in the casinos of neighbouring countries like Cambodia, most indulge in small-scale betting through the widespread underground system. Thais will bet on anything – from card games to kickboxing bouts – and because it’s not legal, there’s no regulation of how money is paid out or collected. Unlike in the UK, where you place your bet upfront, quite often Thai betting is done on a book-system, where your bet gets recorded and if you win, you receive the difference between the amount you said you wanted to invest and the payout. If you lose, you’re in debt to the bookies. The temptation then is to place another bet to try to recover the amount you owe, making it easy for debt to spiral out of control.

Like most Thais, Som started out placing small bets. She savoured the exquisite anguish of having to make a choice between different outcomes, weighing up all the possibilities before making a decision in a split-second splurge of adrenaline, in which excitement and doubt
merged into one throat-choking ball of anticipation. And she relished the delicious, secret thrill that came with knowing she had a personal investment in how a card game or a football match ended up. ‘Go on,’ she’d urge under her breath, her brown eyes intently focused on the activity in hand. ‘Go on, you can do it.’

Unfortunately for her, Som’s gambling instincts weren’t always entirely trustworthy and bit by bit, her debts began to mount. Panicking, she became caught up in that familiar gambler’s paradox which says ‘gambling might be how I ran up this debt, but it’s also the easiest way to pay it off.’‘If I just win this next one, I’ll stop,’ she’d promise herself, during one of the high-stakes card games she played with increasing regularity. But if she did come out on top, she’d chalk it up to a winner’s streak and convince herself she’d be mad to quit now – and if she lost? Well, how on earth was she going to pay the bookies back, if not by winning the next one?

Som kept the details of her mounting debts from her English husband. Toby was so proper, so law-abiding that he just wouldn’t understand how it was possible to get such a kick from something so frivolous and so, well, dodgy. Perhaps it was just his public school upbringing coming to the surface, but sometimes he could be such an old
stick-in
-the-mud. In fact, Som was becoming just a little bit impatient with her kind, dependable husband. The flutters of excitement she got through gambling weren’t enough to fully feed her need for thrills. In her old single life, she’d
been used to attention from men – the appreciative glances, the tired chat-up lines. While she didn’t exactly miss that life, there was some level where she still needed the validation she got from knowing she was desired, knowing she was attractive. Like many new mothers, she wanted to prove that the woman she had been was still there, somewhere outside the roles of mother and wife that threatened to overwhelm her life.