Free The Murder Exchange by Simon Kernick

struggle to ensue. We'd hurried
    into the interview room at just the moment when *
    * fit, *
    one of the officers slammed Farrow's head into the
wall. Not hard enough to knock him out, but *
enough to open a nasty cut across his forehead.
'Assault! Assault!' he'd screamed. They're killing 1
me! Get me a fucking brief! Now!' The two arresting
officers had let go, and we'd helped Farrow, \ who was handcuffed behind his back, into one of
the chairs. 'Get my brief/ he'd said, all calm now, £ \ blood oozing out of the wound. 1 want to make a % formal complaint. I ain't saying another word until f
I've seen my brief.' And he didn't. Not a word.
    The formal complaint made, all four of us who'd
been in the interview room were later questioned
by representatives of the Police Complaints
Authority, and all of us stuck to the same story: that
Troy Farrow had stumbled during the struggle and
had accidentally knocked his head against the wall. 'j
The arresting officer who Farrow claimed had f '
racially abused him denied the charge but did -^ I
admit calling him a bastard, and I couldn't ^'
comment on this because I hadn't heard the j
exchange. I know that a lot of people would think it
was wrong for me not to say what I saw but at the J
    74
time I thought no lasting harm had been done.
Farrow was patched up by the station's doctor and
needed two stitches, and, anyway, it was no more
than he deserved. Plus, I didn't want to be the
whistleblower. The police get enough flak as it is,
and sometimes when you're a copper it does feel
like the whole world's against you, so you don't
want to be putting the knife into your own side. In
'.he end, I was never going to be the one who ruined
a colleague's career (which is what I would have
done) over one second's stupidity and hotheadedness.
I just couldn't justify it to myself.
    And, at first, it looked like we might have got
away with it. I don't think the people from the PCA
believed us but it was our word against that of a
Known criminal, and we weren't budging, so
eventually they had little choice but to conclude
that the incident was accidental, and that Farrow
had misheard what the arresting officer had said.
    But that wasn't the end of it. A couple of months
later the second arresting uniform, the one who
hadn't pushed Farrow's head into the wall,
admitted what had happened to a bloke in his local
pub after one beer too many, only to find out afterwards
that the bloke was a local investigative
journalist, doing an expose of racism in the Force.
With the conversation recorded, the story appeared
two days later in the local paper, and the case was
suddenly reopened. I found the local media and
even London Tonight parked on my doorstep, asking
me if I was a liar and a racist. I might occasionally
be the one, but I'm definitely not the other. The
whole thing was a nightmare and, although my
    75
boss, DCI Renham, a guy I'd worked for for getting
close to five years, fought to keep me in my
position, the tide of attention was overwhelming,
and in the end, with the story refusing to go away,
the Brass were forced to act. Both arresting officers
lost their jobs; the DC, with me, was put back in
uniform; and I was demoted to DC.
    It was a shameful episode, the whole thing, and
for a long time I found it difficult to come to terms
with. You see, in my eyes, I hadn't done a lot
wrong. I'd made a mistake but I thought the
punishment far outweighed the crime. I took it out
on my wife, made life difficult for her, and maybe
things between us hadn't been quite as strong as I'd
thought, because three months later, after one
argument too many, we separated. It turned out
she'd been having an affair. I suppose this would
have been understandable were it not for the fact
that the other man happened to be the intrepid
journalist who'd broken the story in the first place.
The cheeky bastard had gone round to interview
her about what effect the story was having on her
and the family, and clearly it was having