The Whole Truth by Hunter, Cara (best books to read for women .TXT) 📕

that Gavin started to develop Type 1 diabetes, though that wouldn’t be formally diagnosed for some years yet. And just to flag: that’s another one of those apparently insignificant facts that will turn out to be important later.

But back in 1997, it wasn’t just Gavin’s health that was in trouble.

[SANDRA]

‘It got to the point when it was really taking a toll on the kids – they were tiptoeing round him all the time, and Stacey started getting into trouble at school. That’s when I knew I’d have to do something. It just wasn’t fair on them, never mind me. Though I want it on the record that he never ever hit me. Yeah, he was an angry man, bloody angry, but it was all directed at himself. He thought he’d failed. As a husband, as a dad. As a man.’

[JOCELYN]

Sandra doesn’t want to be interviewed about this on air, but it’s clear from talking to her that this wasn’t the only aspect of the marriage that had gone wrong. The physical side of the relationship had all but disintegrated too, especially after the birth of their third child, Ryan, in 1995. It wasn’t long before Gavin was turning to prostitutes for sex.

It was just another example of Gavin’s habitual bad luck that he chose May 2nd to make his first foray into the Manchester red-light district. He was driving a white van at the time – another hand-me-down from his younger brother, Bobby. A number of the girls working that stretch remembered seeing it.

This is ‘Lexi’. That’s not her real name. She’s worked Lockhart Avenue for ten years. She knew Paula back then, and remembers what she was like.

[‘LEXI’]

‘She was a nice kid. Really small and skinny. Some of the older girls used to mother her a bit. I guess they were worried that she was attracting the perverts, looking so young and that. She wasn’t as fragile as she looked, though she was deffo a bit dense sometimes. Naive, you know? Which is the last bloody thing you need in this job. You have to get good at spotting the weirdos. The ones who just want to hurt you. She was crap at that.’

[JOCELYN]

Paula may well have been a little naive, but she didn’t become a victim because of it. She didn’t go with the wrong punter, because it wasn’t a punter who assaulted her. The man who attacked her grabbed her from behind, dragged her into the undergrowth and bound her wrists with cable ties, before attempting to rape her.

And if you think some of that sounds familiar, you’re right: all of these came to be hallmarks of the predator the press would later christen the ‘Roadside Rapist’.

But all that was months in the future. In 1997, all the police knew was that Paula had been viciously assaulted. And they faced an uphill battle finding who did it because there was no DNA, and no forensics. But they did have one thing on their side.

Paula saw who did it. Only for a moment, as he scrambled to his feet and ran off into the night. But she saw his face.

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