Eight months ago on my visit to Gloucester, I discovered that not all buildings associated with evil are leveled to the ground. Fred West’s first house in Gloucester, at 25 Midland Road, across a beautiful park from Cromwell Street, still stands today. Somehow this property had escaped the public’s attention when it was focused on Cromwell Street. At Midland Road, the dismembered body of his eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine was found buried in the cellar. I was unaware of this house until Nick the landlord told me how, despite being a reasonable man, he had felt “something there” when he visited the property with a view to buying it in 1996. Despite an asking price of only a fraction of the true value, Nick declined. He thought he would have trouble renting it. As it turned out, this is not a problem in a city like Gloucester. It is a deprived area with a large number of migrant workers always in need of affordable accommodation.
On that odd April day, I walked across the park full of people sunning themselves, crossed a busy main road, and found the semidetached property in what was clearly a run-down part of the city. Munchi, a teenage girl, sat on the steps of the house reading a book. I discreetly photographed the house, which immediately made me feel guilty and self-conscious, but I had to ask Munchi about living there. So I approached and tentatively tried to strike up a conversation. I can be an awkward person at the best of times, but I needed to know if she had experienced anything unusual in the house.
Imagine being a teenage girl relaxing with a book on a hot April day and being approached by a middle-aged man wearing an inappropriate leather jacket and asking strange questions. She looked nervous and said that she lived with her cousin, Diana. She was the one to ask. Munchi disappeared inside and returned moments later with Diana, an older woman, who eyed me with equal suspicion. I asked again, trying to be as relaxed as possible. “Have you noticed anything strange since you have been living in the house?” Diana was much more open. She said she saw things out of the corner of her eye in the living room. I don’t know what I expected to hear. It’s such a leading question in the first place. I asked if they knew who Fred West was. Both looked blank and shook their heads.
For a brief instance, I was tempted to tell them the history of their home. How twenty years ago the world’s media was focused on Fred and Rosemary West. How people were appalled and disgusted when the details of the gruesome murders of young women and two daughters became known. Telling them this history would have been no stunt with a cardigan to make a point. Munchi and Diana were really living with the past. Their response to this news would be genuine but devastating. What was I to do?
They say ignorance is bliss and to take that away is cruel and unnecessary. So I thanked Munchi and Diana for their time and left them baffled by the strange professor. By the time these words are in print, I expect that Munchi and Diana will have moved on and some other unsuspecting tenants will be living at 25 Midland Road. But if not, Munchi and Diana, I am sorry for not telling you, but I thought it was better for you not to know. There is no essence of evil in your house. It’s simply something our minds create. But knowing that doesn’t make it feel any more comfortable to be living in the house of a murderer. That’s because we are a sacred species.
BATH, ENGLAND
CHRISTMAS 2007