LITMIR.BIZ

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us what happened, Darren,” suggested Hardwick, kindly.

      Blackheath’s voice was muffled, but nevertheless clear enough for the tape. He started slowly.

      “The whole thing ruined my life. Just one foolish accident and that was it. I was happy until then; life was good.”

      He sat up and looked the three officers squarely in the eyes, one at a time.

      “You know, I never planned on working in a tyre fitters all my life. In fact if you’d asked when I was sixteen I’d have laughed at you. I wanted to be a mechanic, not a ‘technician’.” He mimed quote marks in the air. “I wanted to run my own garage. Do real repairs. I wanted customers to drive in with a weird noise under the bonnet first thing in the morning and drive out good as new that afternoon. Instead I spend all day changing fucking tyres and exhausts. If we do an MOT and the car fails on anything more complicated than a dodgy windscreen wiper, we have to get one of the local garages to fix it for us. It’s bloody embarrassing. They barely hide their contempt for us when we drop off the car. They write down what they did on a piece of paper so that we can read it to the customer, as if we don’t know one end of a spanner from the other.”

      “So what happened?” Hardwick repeated softly.

      “It was a few years ago. I was about halfway through a motor mechanics course at college, studying two days a week and working the rest of the week as an apprentice at my dad’s mate’s garage. Everything was going fantastic. Then I met Kim Bradshaw.”

      He paused, taking a deep breath. “She was the boss’ daughter. Nothing dodgy, you understand,” he added hastily. “She’s the same age as me. Anyway, it was just a bit of fun, you know. We went out a few times, nothing serious. But one night we got drunk at a party and ended up around the back of the garage.” He grimaced at the memory. “Not terribly romantic. Anyhow, I forgot about it for a few weeks — we sort of avoided each other, I guess. Then one day she texts me out of the blue asking to come over and see me. She was pregnant.”

      “What did you do?”

      “Well, I shit myself. I didn’t know what to say. I was nineteen, in college, earning bugger all. I didn’t even love her. She was in the same position. She worked two days a week in the small parts shop attached to the garage and spent the rest of the time studying hair and beauty at the tech college.

      “I said we couldn’t keep it, but she refused to consider an abortion. Her family are strict Catholics. My parents are too. So in the end I proposed.”

      Warren raised an eyebrow. “I thought Sally was your first serious relationship.”

      Blackheath blushed. “She was. Kim meant nothing to me. I was just panicking. Getting married seemed to be the right thing to do. Fortunately, Kim turned me down. Called me a bloody idiot. Either way, we knew we had to tell our parents, which neither of us was looking forward to.

      “So she went home to tell her old man…” Blackheath’s voice started to shake “…but I was too scared to go with her. I wish I had now, then maybe she wouldn’t have done what she did.

      “I knew I should tell Mum and Dad, but I couldn’t figure out how to, so I went to bed, praying the phone wouldn’t ring, promising myself I’d tell them in the morning.

      “I never got the chance. Two a.m., the doorbell rang. It was the police.”

      Blackheath’s voice was getting quieter and quieter. “They arrested me on suspicion of rape. I’ll never forget it. Mum was in tears and Dad was demanding to know who I was supposed to have done it with.”

      Blackheath’s eyes were looking watery again, but this time his voice was tight with anger. “They took me straight down the police station. I was fingerprinted and a DNA sample taken, then I was strip-searched and they photographed me.” His lip curled in disgust. “It was the most humiliating experience of my life.”

      Warren ignored the faint feeling of sympathy, knowing that whatever indignities Blackheath had suffered were nothing compared to the violations heaped upon rape victims.

      “Anyway, I was charged and spent the weekend in jail before being bailed on the Monday morning, pending trial in six months.”

      “It says in the file that the case was dropped. The prosecution changed their case at the last moment. What happened?”

      Blackheath shook his head, slowly as if he still couldn’t believe it.

      “It was all part of the plan. It’s obvious now. She got what she wanted. If her old man knew she was pregnant because of a drunken one-night stand he’d have disowned her. As things stood, she was the victim. The fact was, the prosecution case was really weak. We had a really strong defence and we knew that we were going to win. There were holes in her story and her credibility was poor. We had the texts that she sent to me the morning after the night we did it and the text she sent me asking to meet up when she told me about the pregnancy. If I really had raped her, why would she have wanted to meet me again?”

      The question was clearly rhetorical and Blackheath continued without prompting. “Anyway, you know how this country works. Rape victims are granted anonymity, of course, but the accused is dragged through the mud, his life laid out for everyone to see. Obviously I lost my job, I couldn’t carry on working for Kim’s dad, and college suspended me indefinitely — in reality they kicked me out. I couldn’t continue there.

      “And the anonymity thing is a joke. They couldn’t report Kim’s story in the papers obviously, but she made sure that everyone in the community knew. And her old man made sure every business in the area knew the story. I couldn’t go for a pint without people pointing or staring. Some places wouldn’t even let me through the door. I was attacked twice and my parents’ house was spray-painted and the tyres slashed on their car.

      “Anyway, finally the day comes for her to testify. It was a Monday and I turn up and after hanging around all day I’m told that the prosecution have requested a delay because Kim is ill.

      “The next day I turn up and she isn’t there. I’m told that the prosecution case has been dropped and I’m free to go.”

      “Well, surely that was a good thing?” Karen Hardwick looked confused. Warren said nothing, letting Blackheath explain.

      “No! That was the worst thing that could happen, other than being convicted of something I didn’t do. I wasn’t acquitted or cleared of any wrongdoing. Everyone reckons I ‘got away with it’. The story Bradshaw and her family put out was that the stress was so bad she had a miscarriage and they decided that it wasn’t worth putting her through the ordeal and dropped the case.

      “It’s bollocks, of course. Everyone knows that she got a late abortion and that her case was so weak it shouldn’t have made it to court. But you lot are under pressure to solve more rapes. They must have figured they were going to lose this one, so they didn’t raise a stink when she said she wanted to drop it.” The bitterness was strong in his voice and he stared the three police officers straight in the eyes, as if he held them personally responsible for his ordeal.

      “So what happened next?”

      Blackheath snorted derisively. “Well, you know what they say — ‘no smoke without fire’. Obviously I couldn’t get my job back and those bastards in the college admissions department refused to enrol me again, so I spent the next nine months on the dole. Nobody was interested in employing me.

      “Eventually, I got a call from Jack Bradley.” Here, Blackheath’s expression softened slightly. “He’s a good bloke. He needed a tyre fitter and he knew I had enough training for the job. He’s a Methodist preacher and he believes in giving people a second chance. He said that in the eyes of the law I’m an innocent man and if Jesus could forgive convicted criminals, then the least he could do was give someone like me a helping hand.” Blackheath shook his head. “Twelve months previously, I’d have called him a patronising bastard and told him to stick his job, but I was desperate.”

      He

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