Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • A22

NEWS 2 The triumph The City cheered the £1bn flotation of Ian hedge fund this week. But behind his success lies personal tragedy Crash: the wreckage of the Range Rover in which Joanne Wace and her two children were fatally injured 22 16.01.07 Shared Dish: You must live in a block containing less than 48 flats to take up this offer. A minimum of 4 households must agree to subscribe to Sky digital. Installation subject to survey of your block. There will be a one-off cost for your managing agent for the bonding of the Shared Dish equipment to an earth connection by a qualified electrician of their choice.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL SKY ON 08708 504 903 FREESTANDARDEQUIPMENT SKY TV FOR FLATS PACKAGES FROM JUST £15 A MONTH Get great entertainment from Sky TV in your flat with our Shared Dish. It serves the whole building and FREE. KEITH DOVKANTSF i i command more admiration than Ian Wace. At 25, he was the youngest ever director at SG Warburg. In his 30s he set up one of Bri most successful hedge funds and now, at 43, he is among more respected financial figures, an innovator who, while creating a personal fortune of £200million, still finds time to work for disadvantaged children.

He was feted this week when his fund completed a £1 billion flota- tion, a record of its kind. But who, among those now saluting his suc- cess, can really know what he over- came to achieve it? Ian Wace has endured hell. On a September afternoon 12 years ago, he was driving home to London ahead of his wife, Joanne, who was following behind in her Range Rover with their two children. In his rear-view mirror, Wace saw the Range Rover swerve. It mounted the crash barrier on a busy dual carriageway and landed in the path of an oncoming lorry.

He ran back to the scene, found his baby daughter and wife trapped in the wreckage. They did not survive. His four- year-old son died in his arms. He never talks about what hap- pened. After he left the hospital where his wife died, he returned to London, but not to the family home.

He bear it. Instead, Wace moved into a hotel. Slowly, with the help of family and those closest to him the Conser- vative deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine) is a family friend he began to recover. A year later he met Fiona Hardy, who was working for an oil com- pany in the City. He was 33, she was 32.

They began seeing each other and were married in a joyful church ceremony in the Oxfordshire vil- lage of Rousham. A villager who was there recalled: and Fiona arranged a choir and a soloist. When the congregation sang the last hymn, Jerusalem, some were in Last autumn, Wace and his bride found a home in which to live out the rest of their lives. It is an exquisite manor house, set in more than 200 acres of lush countryside in the southern shires. It has a separate guest house, lodges, heated garage for a fleet of cars, a ten-pin bowling alley and a cinema.

It cost more than £20 million. With his business prospering and a new home and family by his side, Ian Wace has found happiness again. But his smiles today do not lessen the enormity of the tragedy that befell him 12 years ago. The only time he has ever mentioned the crash was once just after he married Fiona. Of their marriage he said: is a happy-ish Then he added: there are still a lot of problems.

You can never forget the When it happened, Wace had just left Warburgs. He had been in charge of European securities, but wanted to start his own investment fund. His life seemed full of promise. He and his wife Joanne had just finished renovating a rambling old house in Dryburgh Road, Putney. It was badly run down when they bought it and it had taken them more than two years to turn it into a family home.

Their son Guy was four and baby Alicia a month away from her first birthday. Joanne had driven the children down to stay with her hus- family in Newton Ferrers, one of loveliest villages on the banks of the River Yealm. He drove his Mercedes down from London at the weekend to join them and they travelled back up together in a two-vehicle convoy. They were near Thruxton in Hampshire on the A 303 when Wace glanced in his mirror to see the Range Rover veer wildly towards the central reservation at 70mph. Some weeks later he told the coroner he shouted out his name: was looking at its wheels and first of all I said Then I shou Jo a ne a nd he I screamed as I saw the wheels first hit the gravel then the The Range Rover careered over the steel barrier and was crushed, almost beyond recognition, by a lorry heading in the opposite direc- tion.

Tony Mitchell, a station officer with Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, was one of the first to see Wace at the scene of the accident. cradled the boy until he died in his arms, lifting him up to his shoulders, held him for a moment and then laid him down on the grass and covered the body over. He kept walking over to his wife who was trapped in the car and saying: will be all right, But she was in a bad It took the fire fighters 40 min- utes to cut baby body free. Wace watched in silence. was an extremely traumatic police inspector Edward Robertson said.

father watched while police removed the children. He was hold- ing on to their bodies and did not want to be split from them. He is a happy-ish ending. But there are still a lot of problems. You can never forget the THE widow of a shop- keeper stabbed to death after he tried to protect her from rowdy customers hit out at police today for failing to bring his killers to justice.

Siva Supramaniam, 33, died as his wife, Shanta, cradled him in her arms. But more than four months later, her hus- killers are still at large and she cannot return home for fear of being attacked. Mrs Supramaniam, 27, identified one of the attackers to police and has been forced to leave her home above the shop and live in a safe house. Talk- ing for the first time today, she said: people are on the street. The police have told me not to go back because they live close to the shop.

I do not understand why they are not in She added: have they not been The killing took place on 31 August after Mrs Supra- maniam was abused by a man and a woman at the off-licence in Harrow Road, Wembley. Mr Supra- maniam stepped in and asked the pair to leave. But when he followed them into nearby Tring Avenue, he was stabbed in the heart and stomach and battered around the head with a blunt weapon. He managed to stagger back to the door of his shop and collapsed. Janine Spence, 42, of nearby Harrow Road, appeared at Brent magis- court charged with murder in September but the case was later with- drawn.

Police arrested four men and another woman in connection with the murder but all were later released without charge. Four other men arrested have been bailed to return to a north London police a i i Anyone with information should call the incident room on 020 8358 0400 or Crimestoppers anony- mously on 0800 555 111. JACK LEFLEY Why are thugs who killed my husband still free?.