Hitmen (12 page)

‘You going to be alright?’ Noeleen asked him.

‘Course I am. Where’s the … you-know-what?’

‘Here it is.’

Noeleen handed him a rolling pin from the top of the fridge.

‘What’s up with this fuckin’ light,’ he said, flicking the switch on and off in the hall.

‘I took the bulb out, remember?’

‘Oh yeah, sorry.’

‘You can see by the light in the bathroom. Come up.’

Noeleen led Buxton to a small sewing room at the front of the house. ‘He won’t see you here as he comes up the stairs. Just don’t make any noise.’

By the time Shane arrived at the Moon at 11:10pm to pick up the two men, Terry was extremely tipsy. Kay and Shane glanced at each other in amusement as their dads laughed and joked in the back of the car on the way home that night.

‘You all right?’ Terry asked Tony as they stopped to let Tony out at his front gate.

‘Abso-fuckin-lootly,’ slurred Tony. ‘Right as rain..’

Upstairs in the sewing room Paul Buxton, wearing a black balaclava helmet, armed with that rolling pin in his gloved hand, watched Tony stumbling up the garden path. From the car, Terry, Shane and Kay watched as he just managed to close the wrought-iron gate behind him. A few more steps and he was through the side door, which was always left unlocked for him on such occasions.

Noeleen ignored her husband when he mumbled something about making her a cup of tea and stayed wrapped in a duvet on the living room sofa. She heard Tony curse the hall light for not working. Then he began climbing the stairs with great uncertainty. Noeleen crept out into the hall. This time it really was going to happen. They’d be shot of the old bugger for good. The man she’d never really loved, the man who didn’t mean anything to her. The man who was rarely capable of making love to her.

Upstairs, Tony stumbled into the toilet. Noeleen looked upwards just as she heard the first blow connect with a sharp
crack. Tony cried out. She felt a surge of joy and relief. The blows that followed were softer and more muffled, as if someone was hitting a cushion. Then followed a handful of grunts and cries which seemed to go on forever. That was followed by total silence. A deathly lull.

Noeleen took a deep breath and then spotted the outline of someone creeping quietly down the stairs. She gasped with relief when she realised it was Paul Buxton.

‘Is he…?’

‘Yes. But it’s all gone a bit wrong,’ Buxton panted, his eyes wide and bulbous. ‘It’s a right bloody mess up there. He wouldn’t go down easy.’ Buxton paused for a moment. ‘Have you got it?’

‘Here you are,’ responded Noeleen, as she took the money from the pocket of her dressing gown and handed it to him.

Just then what felt like a fist smashed into her face and lights flashed in front of her eyes. Her nose immediately throbbed with pain.

‘Why d’you do that? You hurt me,’ she cried.

‘Listen, you say the burglar hit you as he was escaping. Makes it more convincing,’ said Buxton. Noeleen had completely forgotten that part of the plan. ‘Now, I’d better go back upstairs and make sure the job is done.’

Noeleen heard him open the door to the toilet again and then, to her surprise, there was more thumping. Eventually, Buxton came back downstairs again.

‘I never saw a man take such a hiding,’ he said in the hallway, looking badly shaken. ‘It’s all over now. Remember, don’t even bring my name into it or you’ll be sorry.’

Noeleen, dabbing the blood from her nose, watched as he slipped out through the open patio doors. She knew that now it was her turn to put on a word-perfect performance. She sat herself on the bottom stair, went forward on her knees, then began crawling up the steps, one by one. She expected to see Tony lying there on the landing. Nothing. So, in the faint green glow from the bathroom light, she forced herself to look towards the bedroom.

Then she nearly died of fright. Her husband was standing there, looking straight at her. All she could see was a mass of blood where his face should have been.

‘Tony?’

He said nothing. He took a step towards her and put out his hand. He was going to touch her shoulder.

‘Oh God!’

She let out a scream, turned and scuttled back down the stairs. It was too late now. She couldn’t do anything about it. If she tried to finish him off then the police would know what had happened. And if Paul Buxton couldn’t kill him, why on earth would she be able to?

Noeleen had no choice but to follow through with the plan because if he didn’t die, her only chance was if the police believed her story that a burglar had slipped into the house without her knowledge. She looked down at the blood staining her pyjama bottoms, ran her fingers through her hair, then pulled open the front door.

‘Help me! Please help me!’

It was all a far cry from the day Noeleen and Tony Hendley settled into comfortable middle age in a nice little
semi-detached
house at 8, Coniston Crescent, in Derby. Back in those days, Tony had just left the army and got himself a good job as Catering Manager for Lubrizol Laboratories so that Noeleen hadn’t even had to work. Trouble was that Noeleen wasn’t the type to sit around doing nothing. She certainly didn’t like to feel too settled.

So she joined the local slimming club at The Guildhall in Derby. And she watched with delight as all her hard effort in the gym and in her diet paid off handsomely. She bought smarter clothes, she tinted her hair an eye-catching blonde. But what people noticed most of all was the change in her personality. Now Noeleen had the confidence to flirt and she was constantly the centre of attention.

Soon she was managing three slimming clubs, all connected to the
Slimming Magazine
organisation and even took members off to conventions as far afield as London and Birmingham. Back at home, the marriage of her son Shane to Kay McIntosh in July 1991 provided wedding photos in which Noeleen outshone the bride. Husband Tony with his long nose and hangdog expression was hardly noticeable.

Back on that evening of 1 November, Noeleen was screaming outside her front door when her neighbour Sam Millward told his wife: ‘I think I heard someone out there.’ In a quiet place like Coniston Crescent people noticed unusual sounds. Jean Millward dashed out to find Noeleen screaming and sobbing as she crawled up the steps of another neighbour’s house.

‘Tony, Tony,’ Noeleen cried, pointing to her own house.
Neighbours Audrey and John Horrocks opened their door and immediately helped Noeleen into their hallway.

‘What’s happened,’ asked Jean. ‘Tell us, dear.’

Noeleen’s breathing was uneven. She sobbed: ‘There was a… man,’ she mumbled. ‘Dining room.’

‘Come on,’ Audrey said to her son Glyn. ‘Let’s go and see what’s happened.’

The front door to the house was wide open as Glyn cautiously led the way in. The hall was in darkness. They could just make out the open patio door, curtains blowing in the wind.

‘No one’s here, Mum,’ announced Glyn.

Then they poked their heads in the lounge and noticed a blanket where Noeleen had been sleeping and the TV was blaring. The only other light in the room came from a gas fire.

The only other light was coming from the upstairs bathroom. Glyn went up followed by his mother. The steps seemed wet and sticky. Then they peered into the main bedroom. ‘Go back downstairs, Mum,’ Glyn told Jean. ‘Don’t come up.’

But he was too late. They both stood in the doorway too appalled to say anything at first.

‘Quick, call an ambulance,’ said Glyn.

Audrey immediately ran back downstairs to the phone. Glyn crept through the semi-darkness to the side of the bed and leaned down to the bloodied figure lying flat on his back.

‘You’ll be alright, Mr Hendley,’ said Glyn. But Tony did not respond.

Glyn went back downstairs and told his mother he had to sit down because he felt faint. It was 11:50pm on November 1, 1991.

The first policeman on the scene was PC Malcolm Kean, who was puzzled when he found the hall light did not work and got a torch from his patrol car. That’s when he noticed blood on the carpet, on the walls, even on the furniture in the landing.

In the main bedroom, he found Tony Hendley lying on the bed, his head and shoulders protruding from the bedclothes which were also soaked in blood. The constable tried to lift his head but it was limp. What was the point? He tried to switch on the bedside light and that was when the man he thought was unconscious reached out a hand and touched him.

‘Take it easy. An ambulance is coming,’ PC Kean told Tony Hendley. ‘Can you tell me who did this? What was his name?’ All he got was a gargled groan.

Then PC Kean noticed that the man’s shirt, soaked in blood, a cardigan and a blood-splattered pair of trousers were all neatly draped on a chair. Even his blood-splattered shoes were neatly positioned under the chair. It seemed as if this man – the victim of a horrendous attack – had managed to put himself to bed after first taking all his clothes off and neatly hanging them over a chair. PC Kean didn’t realise that Tony Hendley’s army background had instilled discipline in him, whatever the circumstances.

While waiting for the ambulance, PC Kean also noticed a rolling pin covered in blood on the landing. Another policemen who arrived shortly afterwards managed to find a bulb and put it in the landing light socket. That’s when he noticed a black balaclava lying on the top stair.

Paramedics eventually arrived and took Tony Hendley to
the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. After examining his injuries he was then transferred to the neuro-surgical unit at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, for emergency surgery. The prognosis was not good.

Back in Coniston Cresecent, Noeleen was giving detectives an account of what had happened. She told how her husband had been out with Tony McIntosh, father of their
daughter-in
-low Kay. Noeleen claimed she had a bad back and had stayed at home to watch TV.

She then said she was about to go to sleep when the car pulled up outside and she heard Tony clanking his way through the wrought-iron side gate. She said he followed his usual routine after a night at the local pub and headed for the toilet for a pee. She even recalled how he’s put his head round the door of the lounge on his way up to offer her a cup of tea. She couldn’t remember if she’d responded.

She told police how the next thing she heard was ‘thump, thump, thump. It sounded like things being knocked over.’ Then, said Noeleen, a series of bangs as if he was falling down the stairs. She claimed she rushed into the hallway and called his name but got no response. It was only then she noticed the patio door curtains flapping in the wind. Then a man appeared from nowhere and hit her hard in the face.

Noeleen said she was so badly hurt she fell to the ground and found herself on all fours where she screamed to Tony for help. That’s when Tony appeared by the bedroom door unrecognisable after his beating. She told him she’d go and get a neighbour.

‘Can I go to Tony, now?’ she then asked the detectives.

‘Of course, Mrs Hendley. We’ll drive you over.’

At the hospital it was a death-watch scenario. Few expected Tony Hendley to live through the night. Noeleen made a point of holding his hand until early Sunday morning when doctors and nurses pronounced no sign of life. They needed her permission to cut off the life support machine. She fought back tears as she nodded and signed the relevant papers. At 9:20am Tony was officially pronounced dead.

The only awkward moment came when it was discovered that Tony had signed an organ donor card. Noeleen wanted his wishes to be honoured but that could have caused enormous problems for the coroner who would now be obliged to carry out a full autopsy. However forensic pathologist Dr Clive Bouch allowed Tony’s kidneys to be used for donation because it was clear that his injuries were to the face and head.

Initially, police assumed that it must have been a burglary which had gone badly wrong. In any case, Noeleen couldn’t have done it herself because she would have been literally drenched in blood if that had been the case. Blood found on her hands and knees was entirely consistent with her account of crawling up the stairs.

Yet there remained great doubts in the minds of some of the investigating officers. Burglaries in general were very rare in the area where the Hendleys lived and there was the strange matter of that missing light bulb in the hall. The nature of the attack also raised doubts because any one of the 25 blows which rained down on Tony Hendley should have been enough to kill him. Witnesses described his head as looking like a bloody sponge, but why would a burglar hang
around battering a man when his main priority was to get away from the scene as quickly as possible?

Even at this early stage, only about half of the detectives involved in the investigation believed it was a genuine burglary. As a result, a unit of policemen decided to concentrate on Tony Hendley’s family and friends. In particular they focused on Noeleen Hendley.

Meanwhile Noeleen herself was being photographed in black attending masses in memory of her dead husband and telling the world through the local media about her grief and deep sense of loss.

However, detectives Joe Orrell and Graham Freer, assigned to provide support to the grieving family, soon noticed a different side to Noeleen. There were frequent moments when she seemed cold and distant. And when Noeleen’s mother arrived from Dublin she was immediately very hostile to the police.

In January, when the body was finally released for burial, detectives observed the funeral as Noeleen went completely over the top with an outpouring of grief that would have put a Hollywood star to shame. One of the investigators later remarked: ‘Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it.’ Even the police were arguing amongst themselves as to whether Noeleen had had her husband killed.

The most obvious clue might have been the life insurance payout. Noeleen got a £69,000 lump sum from Tony’s pension scheme at work as well as £285 a month. She was also due two small policies totalling £15,500, but none of this was evidence of her murderous intentions.