Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2010 | Page 29

INTERVIEW

February/March 2010

Photo: Bob pictured in thr early 70's as a young detective

life

Photo: Bob on the right closely examining a body killed elsewhere
but dumped on waste ground beside the M62 Motorway.:

wasn’t he fearful of backlashes? “No,

fabled relaxing affect on this non-stop

Bob. “But these people, they just give

providing you’ve been right with them

policeman and his devoted wife. “Being

everything.”

they’re right with you. I’ve always treated

in the Force meant I understood the

people the way I’d want to be treated. I

demands of the job,” says Carol. “And I

go back to these influences from earlier,”

love him, so of course I supported him.”

he says, referring to all those uncalled-for

Now, as well as getting Deadly Focus

clips round the ear – “Police shouldn’t

self-published, Carol has secured an

treat people like that.” When in the midst

agent. And it was her idea for the book

of a case, members of the public would

sales to benefit the Earl Mountbatten

come up to him when he and Carol were

Hospice, as well as another two hospices

doing the weekly shop with their own

in Wakefield and Elland, West Yorkshire.

suggestions: “Here, Bob, had you thought

Why? “I thought I worked hard,” says

Deadly Focus is available from
the Earl Mountbatten Hospice
shops, Isle of Wight Tourist
Information as well as major
bookstores and online.

it might be so-and-so that did it?!” Carol
laughs: “We couldn’t get round Asda
without someone coming up to us!”
Their lighthearted approach belies the
reality that there were no real days off.
His catalogue of cases is relentless. He
spent days at a time in the mortuary – and
TV post mortems go nowhere to prepare
for the real thing – and there were nights
when Carol didn’t even know he’d come
to bed at all. But he couldn’t rest until
that case was finished because if you
relaxed there might just be something,
something that you miss. In the end his
body told him to quit. He found, getting
out of the car one night, he was frozen
to the spot. His GP suggested it was time
to stop. “If you don’t step away you get
sucked into a vacuum of sadness,” says
Bob.
Thirty years seemed a reasonable
innings, and the Isle of Wight has had its
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Photo: Savage killers of 8 people in Huddersfield firebomb attack who got a total of eight
life sentences - 334 years in jail.
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