Further to my previous blog about the tragic death of DJ Derek, by chance today I drove past where his body had been found. I wasn’t looking for it, but approaching the Mall at Cribbs Causeway, I could not miss it. There, at the junction of Hayes Way and Merlin Road, was the blue tent where Derek’s body had been found. Almost as far as the eye could see were ‘scientific investigations’ police vehicles, on the ground were, I would imagine, forensic examiners.
I can now see why the body was not found until last week. There are no pavements nearby, there would be little or no reason to go there at all and yet it is a matter of, maybe 10 or 15 yards from a very busy junction. The tent is not in some kind of hollow; it’s actually at the top of the bank. The wonder is that the body was ever found at all.
That 10 to 15 yards. If, oh that terrible word, if. I wonder if we will ever know how Derek ended up in that exact spot, but I so hope, for the feelings of the family that we do and then, more importantly, that the explanation is innocent. Whether the discovery of the body will jolt someone’s memory from last year, someone who was driving by, saw something unusual and then thought nothing more of it. Now that Derek has, finally, been found, I hope the authorities can find the answers quickly.
People were slowing down at the roundabout, more I suspect in curiosity than ghoul. It’s not something you see every day, not something you ever want to see. Even if you knew nothing about this very sad story, you would know, in one glance, that someone had died. There were probably many people like that, just passing through.
For Derek, it really has been a matter of so near and yet so far.
