The Whole Truth

So all they had to do was find him. Because they knew that as soon as they got him into an ID parade, they’d have their man. Simple, right?

Wrong.

[DESMOND WHITE]

‘The first time I saw Gavin was in the custody suite at Northampton Road police station.’

[JOCELYN]

That’s Des White. He was Gavin’s solicitor back then. Or rather he was the Legal Aid lawyer who happened to be next on the roster the night Gavin was arrested.

It was just after eleven on May 5th, three days after Paula had been attacked. But a lot had happened in those three days.

[DESMOND]

‘There was a huge police operation in Lockhart Avenue after the assault. And for the most part the girls were very cooperative. After all, they didn’t want a sexual predator on the loose any more than anyone else.’

[JOCELYN]

As it turned out, none of the girls had seen what happened to Paula, though one of them did see a man in a dark hoodie running away about the time the attack took place. But that wasn’t much use on its own. The police needed more. And after a couple of days, they got it.

The CCTV trawl yielded footage of a white van accelerating away from the area. It was Gavin’s van, still registered at the time to his brother, Bobby. Though it didn’t take the police long to trace who’d really been driving it that night.

Armed with the van’s number plate, they started to piece together Gavin’s movements in the hours leading up to the assault. Soon they could not only place him at the scene, they also had footage of him filling up the van earlier that evening, at a petrol station two miles away.

He was wearing a dark hoodie.

[DESMOND]

‘It was all circumstantial, of course. It didn’t prove anything. But it was enough for an arrest, and it was enough to get Gavin into an ID parade.’

[JOCELYN]

Gavin was taken to the Northampton Road station and questioned there for several hours, throughout which he steadfastly refused to answer any questions. But the police weren’t that concerned. They still thought they had their man. All they needed was Paula to identify him and the case would be closed.

Gavin was Number 3 in the identity parade. He remembers it vividly, because he’d always thought 3 was his lucky number. And perhaps he was right. Because when Paula was asked if she recognized anyone in the line-up, she answered immediately, and without hesitation.

No.

[DESMOND]

‘That should have been the end of it. But things don’t always go the way they should, especially when it comes to the criminal justice system. The police didn’t believe that Paula hadn’t recognized him – some of the officers were openly speculating that she’d been intimidated – that Gavin must have got to her somehow and scared her into keeping quiet.

And then the following day the police came up with yet more CCTV, this time showing Gavin in the vicinity of Paula’s flat on the morning of the day he was arrested. They said he must have found out where she lived and followed her there, but luckily we could account for him being in the area, because it was only half a mile from the Job Centre. And throughout the whole debacle Paula’s story never changed – she hadn’t been threatened by anyone, and she didn’t recognize anyone in the line-up for the simple reason that they had the wrong man. So in the end the police had no choice. They had to let Gavin go.’

[JOCELYN]

And that really was the end of it. Or, at least, so Gavin thought.