No Smoke Without Fire

As they waited they gazed through the window into the garage beyond. Blue-overalled mechanics worked away on four different vehicles, Along the far side of the space were literally hundreds of different tyres, forming an almost seamless wall of black, shiny rubber, broken only by brightly coloured advertising posters urging customers to ready their car for winter. Warren counted four mechanics, but no Darren Blackheath.

Finally, the man on the phone finished. Looking up, his eyes narrowed. It was clear that the three visitors weren’t customers. Nevertheless, Warren showed his warrant card and asked if Blackheath was working.

The man nodded his head, wearily. “Yeah, out the back in the stockroom for all the good he’s doing, poor sod. He turned up yesterday morning unexpectedly.” He gestured towards the garage. “I’d already covered his shift and promised the overtime to somebody else, but I couldn’t turn him away. He clearly needs the company. Of course, he’s not said two words to anyone since he turned up, but what can you do?”

Warren nodded sympathetically and asked if they could speak to him.

“Sure, you can use the kitchen. I’ll tell the lads to give you some privacy.” Rounding the desk, the man led them through a door marked ‘Staff Only’. “He’s a liability at the moment,” the man whispered quietly. “I don’t trust him to do MOTs or change tyres — he’s too distracted. I don’t want to think about what would happen if he accidentally forgot to tighten something… Fortunately, we’ve just received a big parts delivery that needs putting away and Ken our store man is off with a bad back. Worst that’ll happen is we spend a bit longer than usual trying to find things.”

He glanced over at Warren, unable to contain his curiosity.

“Have you any idea who did it? She was a lovely girl, and Darren was well loved-up. He’d be out the door six on the dot every day to collect her. Had to get permission to come out for a pint, you know. Some of the boys used to take the piss a bit, like. Said he was under the thumb. He just smiled and said she had lovely thumbs.”

Warren smiled politely.

“We’re actively pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, but as you can appreciate we aren’t in a position to elaborate.” So Sally Evans wore the trousers in that relationship, then. Was that significant? He wouldn’t be the first man to snap under the pressure of a domineering woman — or was he truly as smitten as everyone, her father aside, seemed to think? A brief image of his own in-laws leapt to mind and he quickly suppressed it.

The short corridor that they stood in had four doors, not including the one that they had just walked through. Two doors on the left had signs bearing ‘Toilet’ and ‘Kitchen’ respectively. The single door on the right said ‘Parts’ and the door at the end labelled ‘Garage’ was covered in brightly coloured warning signs, including that for a fire exit.

Pushing open the door marked ‘Parts’, Bradley called out Blackheath’s name and stepped aside to let Jones enter the room. The room smelled of rubber, oil and lubricants and transported Warren back to childhood Saturdays waiting for his dad in Halfords as he picked up a replacement for whatever component had failed that week on his mother’s ageing Mini.

Blackheath was sitting on the floor, surrounded by small cardboard boxes, some empty, others still sealed. A plastic drawer marked ‘5 Watt bulbs — clear’ was half filled by individually packaged small bulbs. Warren winced; he’d once spent over two hours trying to change just such a bulb on his old Citroën. Finally admitting defeat, he’d eventually paid a small fortune for his local dealer to replace it for him. He still had the scars on his knuckles.

Looking at Blackheath, Warren could see that the man was not doing well. He looked gaunt, his skin a pale, sallow colour. His eyes were bloodshot and Warren was sure that he could smell the faintest whiff of alcohol over his strong aftershave.

“Darren? DCI Jones, we spoke yesterday.”

The young tyre fitter looked up and nodded slowly. “I remember. Have you any news?”

“We’re pursuing a number of different leads, but we need to clarify a few things with you. Would you be willing to accompany us to the police station?”

The young man’s eyes widened slightly. “Am I under arrest?” He looked nervous. Warren filed away the man’s reaction for future consideration; however, in his experience, most people were uncomfortable when asked to go to the police station. Furthermore, unless he was completely naïve and never watched TV, Blackheath had to know that the police routinely suspected the boyfriend in cases such as these. On the other hand, perhaps Blackheath had something to be afraid of?

“No, nothing like that. I’d just rather we got the facts down on tape. At this stage you are simply accompanying us voluntarily to help us with our enquiries.”

The young man nodded his agreement, clearly not registering the caveat that Warren had slipped into the start of the third sentence. As he got to his feet Warren reminded him who Karen Hardwick was and introduced Tony Sutton. As agreed, Hardwick was sympathetic and asked how he was coping; Sutton said nothing, remaining a dark, brooding presence.

* * *

Jack Bradley had been visibly relieved when Blackheath had asked to take a break and the three police officers and the grieving youth arrived back at the station barely twenty minutes later. After being reminded that he wasn’t under arrest and advised of his rights, Blackheath was given a cup of coffee and led into Interview Suite One.

The team of detectives knocking doors on Blackheath and Evans’ estate had yet to find a witness who could positively place Blackheath or his car outside his flat at the time he claimed and so Warren started the interview by confirming the timings claimed by Blackheath the previous day, looking for any discrepancies that might indicate the man was lying. He repeated everything precisely for the tape.

Now for the hard part.

“Darren, how would you describe your relationship with Sally’s father?”

Blackheath sighed. “Me and Bill never got on well. He doesn’t think I’m good enough for his little girl.” He shook his head bitterly. “Sally is…was a really bright girl. And ambitious. She went to university and dreamed of becoming a senior manager in one of the major travel companies one day. Whereas me… Well, you’ve seen where I work. I don’t even have a college certificate.”

“So that was it? He just thought you were a bit beneath her?”

“It was more than that. He thinks I’m lazy and lack ambition and he thinks I’ve made Sally the same way.” Blackheath’s eyes flashed; he was clearly angry about Evans’ perception of him.

“Why would he think that? From what we’ve heard, Sally was a strong, independently minded young woman, with lots of plans for the future.”

“Exactly. The thing is, her old man never really understood what she did at Far and Away. He thought she was just sitting at the desk, checking the computers for cut-price deals. He thought she was stuck in a rut and needed to move on. But she did much more than that. She was unofficially deputy store manager. Kelli, her boss, took her under her wing and was letting her sit in on meetings and try her hand at running the business. Her dad wanted her to leave Far and Away and join one of the big companies as a trainee manager. But Sally reckoned she was getting more experience with Kelli than she’d have got in any of the bigger companies. Besides which, her job at Far and Away was secure — the company was bucking the trend and holding its own against the online companies. If she started fresh at one of the big travel agents, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t sack her the moment they hit a tough patch.” He smiled sadly, clearly remembering a conversation. “She always said that she should be grateful to have a job in the current climate and she’d be mad to risk it. She planned to stay put until the economy picks up.”

“You were going to propose to Sally at Christmas. What do you think her father’s reaction would be? Were you going to ask his permission?”

Blackheath snorted, his face darkening.

“No way. He’d have turned me down flat. Me and Sally are grown adults. I’ve been putting away a little money and Sally had some savings. We were going to pay for the wedding ourselves, do it our own way.”

“You seem pretty confident, considering that you hadn’t yet proposed and she hadn’t accepted. How did you know she would say yes?”

Blackheath shrugged and his eyes turned moist. “I’ve known ever since we moved in together. We’ve talked about having kids but we’re both a little old-fashioned and wanted to get married first. We had plans for the future.” He sniffed loudly, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his overall. “It was never a question of if we’d get married, but when we’d get married.”

There was a few moments’ silence, whilst Blackheath composed himself.

“What about your parents? How did they feel about Sally? What did they think about you moving in with her?”

Blackheath’s face darkened. “I’d rather not talk about that. I haven’t spoken to my parents since before I met Sally.”

Warren raised an eyebrow as if surprised. “How is that so? I thought that you were living with your parents until you moved in with Sally? That was less than a year ago and you’d been dating for, what, two years before then? How can you live with your parents and not discuss Sally with them?”

“My parents’ house is very large and I had the use of the granny flat. It was quite possible to live day to day and not speak to them.”

“I see. Why don’t you get on with your parents, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I do mind you asking and I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Blackheath. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Warren backtracked slightly, careful not to upset the young man. That was Sutton’s job.

“I don’t see why you didn’t just move out if you weren’t speaking to your mum and dad.” Sutton spoke up, right on cue.

“I couldn’t afford to. Not on my own, with the money I earn. Mum and Dad let me have the granny flat for free. Felt guilty, I suppose.”

“What did they feel guilty about? Is it why you don’t talk?” Sutton pressed.

Blackheath scowled. “Like I said, it’s private. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s got nothing to do with Sally’s death.”

“I heard it was to do with the Kim Bradshaw affair.”

Blackheath stared at Sutton in stunned silence for a few seconds, before shaking his head slowly from side to side.

“It’s never going to leave me alone, is it?” he asked no one in particular. “Everywhere I go. Everything I do. It’s never going to be forgotten.” He sank forward, burying his head in his hands.

“Tell 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 paused for a moment. “He really is a good man. Everyone who works for him has been in trouble of some kind. Two lads have been in jail and Joe is a recovering alcoholic. Ken, our store man, had a nervous breakdown when his wife left him and ended up on the street. Jack took him in, gave him a job and ten years later he’s got a new wife and two kids.”

“Sounds as if it all worked out, then,” said Sutton crassly, still playing the role of ‘bad cop’.

Blackheath’s eyes flashed. “Well, I was getting by. I had a job at least and over time people were starting to forget about the court case.”

“Is all this why you don’t speak to your parents?” Hardwick asked softly.

Blackheath glared at her for a few seconds, then sighed. “Yeah. They stood by me and all that and I know they don’t believe I did it, but it cost them. Dad said I had been bloody stupid to get mixed up with the boss’ daughter, let alone get her pregnant. They said they thought I’d been better brought up than that.”

“What do you mean it cost them?”

“Kim Bradshaw’s old man is a big name in the local community. My dad was a painter and decorator with a really good reputation. He never had to advertise — he had more work than he needed just by word of mouth. That all dried up. He had to let his three lads go. They’d worked with him for over twenty years. They were like family. We stopped going to church. Mum couldn’t stand the whispering and the pointing. And then Nan died. She took the court case really hard. She was terrified I’d go to prison. She had a heart attack just before the trial. I know Mum and Dad blame me.

“Anyway, I couldn’t afford to move out and Mum and Dad wouldn’t let their son go homeless, so I moved into the annexe where Nan used to live.”

The tears were back and Blackheath did nothing to stop them. “I hated it. Even though I’d emptied it all out, it was still Nan’s flat. It had its own separate entrance, so I locked the connecting door and that was it. I never set foot in Mum and Dad’s house again. I spent Christmas at a mate’s.”

“And then you met Sally?”

Blackheath nodded. “She was the best thing that happened to me.”

“And she knew about the Bradshaw affair?”

“Who bloody didn’t? Her father certainly did. At first I think she was attracted by the bad-boy image — she was going through a bit of a rebellious streak — but pretty soon she got over it and we fell in love. At least living with Mum and Dad was free. I got a pay rise at work after Jack arranged for me to qualify to do MOTs and we managed to scrape together enough to rent the flat and start saving for the future.”

He looked into space, a sad, wistful expression on his face. “Finally things were going well, you know. We were going to get married and when things picked up we were going to move away. Sally would try for a management position in a travel agent — she’d get a great reference from Far and Away — and I’d try and get another apprenticeship, maybe even start college again. Jack has already said he’d write me letters of introduction or anything I need.”

After a few seconds, Warren started again.

“We know that Sally and her father disagreed over you. Were you aware that the day before she disappeared, she met her father and told him that she thought you were going to propose?”

Blackheath looked thunderstruck.

“What? I don’t understand. How could she have known? I never said anything.”

Warren shrugged slightly.

“You didn’t hide the ring as well as you thought. Regardless, she spoke to her dad about it. He claims that she was having cold feet, that getting married seemed like a big step. He thinks she was going to leave you and come back to live with them.” This last bit was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but Warren was keen to see Blackheath’s reaction.

“No! No way!”

Blackheath shook his head violently, his voice rising. “We were in love. We’d planned our future out together — she wanted to get married. She wanted kids. He’s lying.”

“Why would he lie to us, Darren? He was her father. He just wanted what was best for his little girl. No offence, son, but you’re hardly a prize catch, are you? A poorly paid tyre fitter with a questionable police record hanging over you. And what about those football trips, eh? Whilst Sally was away with her mates in the sun, you’d be off with the lads doing drugs and shagging birds. I hope at least you learnt from your last mistake and you use a condom.”

Blackheath recoiled from Sutton’s accusation as if he’d been physically slapped. “How dare you? I’ve never so much as looked at another woman since I met Sally. And as for drugs, I’ve never touched them. Those football tours are hard work, five games in five days. We’re aiming to top our league — coach won’t let us have more than two beers in the evening and we have to be in bed by midnight. Who told you this bullshit?”

Sutton shrugged. “Not important. The thing is, I can’t help wondering what your response might have been if she decided she didn’t want to get married. You’ve told us repeatedly how great life was with Sally, how finally things were moving forward and how you had plans for the future. Well, what if you suddenly find out that isn’t going to happen? You said yourself how she was going through a rebellious streak when she met you. Maybe she didn’t ‘get over it’. Talking about getting married and having kids — it was just a fantasy. One in the eye for her old man. Maybe he was right and she was coasting, then when she realised you were serious and really did want to get married she got cold feet. It wasn’t a game any more. And who would she turn to to rescue her? Well, Dad, of course.”