Paul Gitsham - No Smoke Without Fire

“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.”