What goes around...

Regular readers may recall that I live in a rural location. My nearest town is about 8 miles away, it's a small gossipy market town that seems to have more than its fair share of sinister events. There are certain persons within the local town that have a certain reputation and one person in particular, over the years, has gained a reputation for being untouchable by the police, despite his reputation for walking on the wrong side of the thin blue line.

Many years ago, a young woman was murdered in the local town, her body was found underneath a railway bridge, she had been sexually assaulted, beaten and bitten. The young woman had been attacked on her way home following a night out at the town's nightclub. Rumours abounded as to who the murderer was and the finger pointed firmly at a certain individual, but he wasn't convicted. A friend of the certain person, who was not quite 'all there' was tried and convicted for the murder, but it was always rumoured that the wrong person went to jail and the defendant had been duped into confessing.

Some years later, the certain individual was under suspicion again, this time for firearms offences. Following a police chase, his car was found abandoned and the driver had legged it across the fields to escape arrest. Evidence was seized (a substantial amount of money), but the money 'disappeared' from the police station and the charges were dropped. This man seemed to be untouchable and blatant with it, rules were for other people.

It seemed that the certain person craved attention. Driving his Ferrari at full speed up a narrow one-way street, dive bombing trains in his Micolight, walking around town with another man on a leash, on his hands and knees pretending to be a guard dog, mounting the pavement in his car to frighten pedestrians, the list goes on.

His father hung himself and rumour had it that the suicide was due to the shame that his son had bestowed on the family. I remember that day, I was in the local town visiting a sunbed parlour (they were all the rage in the 80's) and the certain person was in an adjacent cubicle topping up his tan, even though he'd learnt only a few hours previously that his father was dead.

This certain person always had plenty of money and most certainly enjoyed flashing the cash around town. He had a part share in a local business and I always wondered how on earth the business could produce such profits, in the small market town, for such a lavish lifestyle. Seems I wasn't the only one wondering just how a small town business produced such profits. I remember many years ago, a conversation in a local pub, a local policeman was talking about the certain individual and stating that he didn't care how long it took, he was sure that one day the certain individual would come unstuck and the police would 'have him'.

Scroll forward several years - a neighbour of mine told me that he was going to a party to celebrate the inevitable acquittal of the certain person (who's trial had just finished, but the jury were still deciding). The party was a lavish affair, you see the barrister had assured the certain person that there was no way he could be convicted, not enough evidence, so the certain person's mother had held a party to celebrate son's imminent home-coming.

However for once it seems, the police did a half decent job of collecting evidence and they proved that even running at maximum capacity, the small market town business could not produce profits to account for the lavish home and cars etc. that belonged to the certain person. Certain person got 17 years and a little while later, several more years were added as the police uncovered more evidence for additional crimes. There was even a charge for illegal abstraction of electricity, seems that the certain person had tapped into a local factory's electricity supply and used that electricity to heat his swimming pool (I had to smile at that one).

Glancing through recent House of Lord's decisions in search of material for some BVC homework, I noticed a case with the distinctive surname of the certain individual, and sure enough, there he was appealing on a point of law, but his appeal was not successful. It seems that eventually the untouchable certain person became too brave, too blatant, too clever, upset too many people in the small market town that never forgets. It seems that what goes around comes around, but sometimes it takes a long, long time.