Human Conditioning (54 page)

But I am unsure whether I
believe him.

Kathryn Daley returned to Her Majesty’s Prison Maidstone
on 21
^st
January 2002, two weeks after the murder of Mr Aiden Lance
Foster. She interviewed four of Mr Foster’s inmates and two officers on duty on
the evening of his death. Each of them confirmed that they had not seen or
heard any cause for concern that evening. Officer Livingston, who was reported
to have found Mr Foster’s body in the cell of Dmitry Kovalenko, refused to be
interviewed.

Kathryn also interviewed
Vivien Foster on 23
^rd
January 2002. She remains living on the
Carlton estate in Hackney where Aiden Foster grew up. Mrs Foster, aged
fifty-four, was described by Kathryn as amiable, yet frail and discouraged.
Having lost her husband in 1996, and now her son, and with her daughter living
in Brighton with her husband Adam Draper and their two daughters Esme and
Charlotte, she spoke briefly of the pain of being alone.

She was further distressed to
have been informed that, just four days after the death of her son, her good
friend Grant O’Donoghue, aged seventy-eight, had died of a heart attack in his
home in Hampstead. She spoke of Mr O’Donoghue’s grief following her son’s death
and declared that he had died of a broken heart.

Mrs Foster lives on, but
Kathryn Daley reported that she left the interview wondering what the mother of
the most industrious criminal of a generation really had to live for.

“I am a product of my
upbringing and my environment. I read that psychologists call it
human
conditioning
. And no matter who we meet, no matter what we do or where we
go, we all fall victim to it in the end.”

Aiden Foster

(1969–2002)

HMP Maidstone

7
^th
December
2001

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