by Hunter, Cara
Cara Hunter
* * *
THE WHOLE TRUTH
Contents
Previously … in the Fawley files
Prologue
The Whole Truth
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Cara Hunter is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling crime novels Close to Home, In the Dark, No Way Out and All the Rage, all featuring DI Adam Fawley and his Oxford-based police team. Close to Home was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick and was shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2019. No Way Out was selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 best crime novels since 1945. Cara’s novels have sold more than a million copies worldwide, and the TV rights to the series have now been acquired by the Fremantle group. She lives in Oxford, on a street not unlike those featured in her books.
What readers are saying about
THE WHOLE TRUTH
★★★★★
‘Mind-bending brilliance’
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★★★★★
‘A real page-turner’
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★★★★★
‘Captivating: full of mystery, tension, moral dilemma … outstanding’
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‘This book and this series is fantastic and I can’t wait for more’
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To Judith
A very special lady
Previously … in the Fawley files
This is the fifth book in the Fawley series, so if this is the first one you’ve picked up you might like a quick summary of the key members of the team, so you can hit the ground running. Starting, of course, with the man himself …
Name DI Adam Fawley
Age 46
Married? Yes, to Alex, 44. She’s a lawyer working in Oxford.
Children? The Fawleys’ ten-year-old son Jake took his own life two years ago. They were devastated and thought they’d never be able to have another child. But now Alex is pregnant again …
Personality Introspective, observant and intelligent, outwardly resilient, inwardly less so. He doesn’t care that Alex earns more than he does, or that she’s taller than him in high heels. He’s good at lateral thinking and bad at office politics. He’s compassionate and fair-minded, but it’s not all positives: he can be impatient and he has a short temper. He was brought up in a dreary North London suburb, and he’s adopted, though he only discovered that by accident – to this day his parents have never discussed it.
He doesn’t watch crime on TV (he has enough of it during the day); he listens to Oasis and Bach and Roxy Music (Alex once told him he looks like Bryan Ferry, to which he replied ‘I wish’); if he had a pet it would be a cat (but he’s never owned one); his favourite wine is Merlot and his favourite food is Spanish (though he eats far too much pizza); and surprise, surprise, his favourite colour is blue.
Name DS Chris Gislingham
(recently promoted from DC)
Age 42
Married? Yes, to Janet
Children? Billy, nearly 2
Personality Chirpy, good-humoured, hard-working, decent. And a serious Chelsea fan.
‘Always described as “sturdy” and “solid”, and not just because he’s getting a bit chunky round the middle. Every CID team needs a Gislingham, and if you were drowning, he’s the one you’d want on the other end of the rope.’
Name DC Gareth Quinn
(recently demoted from DS, after getting involved with a suspect)
Age 36
Married? No chance
Personality Cocky, ambitious, good-looking. Fawley describes him as ‘sharp suit and blunt razor’.
‘Quinn took to DS like a dog to water – zero hesitation, maximum splash.’
Name DC Verity Everett
Age 33
Married? No. But has a cat (Hector)
Personality Easy-going personally, ruthless professionally. Lacks the confidence she should have in her own abilities (as Fawley is well aware).
‘She may look like Miss Marple must have done at thirty-five, but she’s every bit as relentless. Or as Gis always puts it, Ev was definitely a bloodhound in a previous life.’
Name DC Erica Somer
Age 29
Married? No. But she’s just started seeing a DI in Hampshire Police, Giles Saumarez.
Personality English graduate and worked as a teacher before joining the police (in the first book she’s still a PC). Her surname is an anagram of ‘Morse’ – my nod to Oxford’s greatest detective!
‘I watch men underestimating her because she’s attractive and in a uniform, and I watch her registering that fact and using it to her advantage.’
Name DC Andrew Baxter
Age 38
Married? Yes, but no children
Personality Stolid but dependable. Good with computers so often gets lumbered with that sort of stuff.
‘A solid man in a suit that’s a bit too small for him. The buttons on his shirt gape slightly. Balding, a little out of breath. Halfway to high blood pressure. He looks forty but he’s probably at least five years younger.’
Name DC Anthony Asante
Age 32
Married? No
Personality A fast-track graduate entrant to the police, he’s new to the team, having recently transferred from the Met. His parents are very wealthy, and his father is a former Ghanaian diplomat.
Fawley describes him as ‘Diligent, intelligent, technically excellent. He does what he’s asked and he takes the initiative when he should. And yet there’s something about him I just can’t get a handle on. Every time I think I have him worked out, he manages to wrong-foot me.’
The other members of the team are Alan Challow, Nina Mukerjee and Clive Conway, in the CSI team, Colin Boddie, the pathologist, and Bryan Gow, the profiler.
Prologue
So you know what to do?
Yeah I’m on it
You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?
FFS you got a better idea?
Just saying. Coz if this goes wrong …
It won’t. Not if you do what I said
OK OK I get it
I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to
People like F – they think they can get away with anything. They don’t give a shit about other people
Time someone turned the tables
I thought you agreed?
I do but this is way more than a dose of their own medicine
WAY more
It’s the only way to stop it happening again
You get that, right?
Yeah I get it
You’ll get your revenge
I told you before. It’s not revenge
It’s justice
Adam Fawley
7 July 2018
13.15
‘More fizz, anyone? Dad – how about you? You’re not even driving, so no excuses.’
Stephen Sheldon smiles up at his da
ughter, hovering behind him with the bottle in her hand. ‘Oh, go on then. Only good thing about being as old as the hills is not caring about bloody government drinking guidelines.’
His wife shoots him a dry but benevolent look; they both know he has to be careful about his health but it’s his birthday and she’s going to cut him some slack.
Nell Heneghan leans across and fills his glass. ‘Seventy isn’t old, Dad. Not these days.’
‘Tell that to my joints,’ he says with a quick laugh, as Nell moves on round the table topping people up.
I reach for Alex’s hand under the table and I can feel the thin fabric of her dress slipping against her damp thigh. God only knows what it must be like to be thirty-five weeks pregnant in these temperatures. There are dots of perspiration along her upper lip and a thin little frown line between her brows the others probably can’t see. I was right: this has been too much for her. I did say we didn’t have to do it – that no one would expect her to, especially in this weather, and Nell had offered to step in – but Alex insisted. She said it was our turn, that it wasn’t fair on her sister to ask her to do it two years running. But that wasn’t the real reason. She knows it; I know it. As her pregnancy advances, Alex’s world contracts; she’s barely leaving the house now, and as for a twelve-mile drive to Abingdon, forget it. I told Nell it’s because she’s anxious about the baby, and she’d nodded and said she’d felt like that herself at this stage, and it was only natural for Alex to be apprehensive. And she’s right. Or at least she would be, if that’s all it was.
Outside in the garden, Nell’s kids are playing football with their dog, taking it in turns doing penalty kicks. They’re eleven and nine, the kids. Jake would be twelve now. No longer a little boy, but not quite yet anything else. Sometimes, before Alex got pregnant again, I’d catch myself fantasizing about how they’d have been together, him and his cousins. Jake was never much interested in sport, but would he be out there anyway, if he was here now? Part of me hopes he’d have done it to be kind, or to please his mother, or because he liked dogs, but there’s another part that would want him as surly and uncooperative as any other twelve-year-old. I’ve learnt the hard way that it’s only too easy to start beatifying a child who’s no longer there.
Audrey Sheldon catches my eye now and we exchange a look; kind on her part, slightly self-conscious on mine. Alex’s parents understand better than anyone what we went through when we lost Jake, but Audrey’s sympathy is like her lemon cheesecake – nice, but there’s only so much of it I can take. I get to my feet and start collecting plates. Nell’s husband, Gerry, makes a half-hearted attempt to help me but I clap him chummily on the shoulder and push him firmly back down in his seat.
‘You brought all the food. My turn now.’
Alex gives me a grateful smile as I collect her dessert plate. Her father’s been badgering her gently to ‘eat up’ for the last ten minutes. Some things about parenthood never die. My mother does the same to me. In twenty years’ time I’ll be doing it myself. God willing.
Out in the kitchen, Nell is stacking the dishwasher, and though she’s doing it all wrong I resist the impulse to intervene as I know it’ll just piss her off; Alex says dishwashers are like barbecues – men just can’t stop themselves muscling in. Nell smiles when she sees me. I like her, I always have. As bright as her sister, and just as forthright. They have a good life, she and Gerry. House (detached), skiing (Val d’Isère), dog (cockerpoo allegedly, but judging by the size of those paws there’s at least a quarter polar bear in there). He’s an actuary (Gerry, not the dog) and if I’m honest I find Dino a good deal more interesting, but the only person I’ve ever said that to is myself.
Nell is looking at me now, and I know exactly what that particular look means. She wants to Have A Word. And being Nell, she pitches straight in. Just like her sister.
‘I’m a bit worried about her, Adam. She doesn’t look well.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I know what you mean, and this bloody heat isn’t helping, but she’s getting regular check-ups. Far more than most women in her position do.’
But most women in her position haven’t been hospitalized for high blood pressure and ordered to take complete bed rest.
Nell leans back against the worktop and reaches for a tea towel, wiping her hands. ‘She hardly ate a thing.’
‘I’m trying, really –’
‘And she looks completely exhausted.’
She’s frowning at me. Because whatever this is, it has to be my fault, right? Out in the garden Ben scores a goal and starts running around the grass with his T-shirt over his head. Nell glances over at them, then fixes her eyes back on me.
I try again. ‘She’s not sleeping well – you know what it’s like in the last trimester. She can’t seem to get comfortable.’
But Nell’s still frowning. Nicky is now yelling that the goal was a cheat; Gerry gets up and goes to the window, calling to his sons to play nicely in that sententious parental tone we all swear we’ll never use. Something else about having kids that never seems to change.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘it’s tough with the job but I’m doing as much around the house as I can, and we’ve got a cleaner coming in once a week for the rest.’
Nell is watching her boys. ‘We were talking earlier,’ she says, without looking round. ‘She says you’ve moved into the spare room.’
I nod. ‘Just so I don’t wake her up. Especially given I’m now getting up at stupid o’clock four days a week for the bloody gym.’
She turns towards me. ‘Quitting still a bummer?’
The look that comes with the words is cool but not unkind: Nell’s an ex-smoker too. She knows all about nicotine displacement strategies.
I try a wry smile. ‘A bastard. But I’m getting there.’
She eyes me up and down. ‘And toning up a bit too, I see. Suits you.’
I laugh. ‘Well, that’s a bloody miracle, considering I’m on a packet of Polo mints an hour.’
There’s a pause and then, finally, she smiles. But it’s a forlorn one. ‘Just look after her, Adam, OK? She’s so stressed out – this baby means so much to her. I don’t know what she’d do if –’ She stops, bites her lip and looks away.
‘Look, Nell – I’d never let anything happen to Alex. Not now, not ever. You do know that, don’t you?’
She glances up, then nods, and I wait. I know what she wants to say, and why she’s having so much trouble doing it.
‘It was in the paper,’ she says eventually. ‘He’s out, isn’t he? Gavin Parrie.’
‘Yes, he’s out.’ I force her to look at me. ‘But he’s on licence – there’ll be strict conditions. Where he can go, who he can see.’
Her lip quivers a little. ‘And he’ll have one of those tag things, right? They’ll know where he is twenty-four hours a day?’
I shake my head. ‘Most of them aren’t that techy. Not yet. The tags are linked to the offender’s address. If he goes out of a specified range the monitoring service gets an alert.’
‘And like Gerry said, if he came anywhere even remotely near here, they’d have his arse back in prison so fast he’d leave skid marks. Right?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Right.’
‘So why would he take such a massive risk?’ She’s willing me to agree now, willing me to belittle her fears. ‘He’s not stupid – he has way too much to lose.’
‘Right.’
She sighs. ‘I’m sorry. You probably think I’m completely overreacting. I just can’t stop thinking about those threats he made in court –’
She can’t possibly know how hard it is to be the man she needs me to be. But I try. ‘He was just venting, Nell. It happens all the time. And I don’t think you’re overreacting. Families always worry when offenders are released. The other victims will be going through exactly the same thing.’
‘But at least Alex has you,’ she says, giving me a wobbly smile. ‘Her own private protection officer.’
I don’t
trust myself to reply to that, but luckily I don’t have to. She touches me gently on the arm and reaches for the pile of plates. ‘We’d best get on. They’ll be wondering what we’re up to in here.’
As I walk back into the dining room I wonder what she’d have said if she knew the truth.
Gavin Parrie isn’t stupid, she’s right about that. And he’d have a hell of a lot to lose, she’s right about that too. But he does have a reason. A reason that might – perhaps – be worth the risk.
Revenge.
Because he wasn’t just venting, that day, in court.
He was guilty. He knows that and I know that. But there’s something else we both know.
Gavin Parrie was convicted on a lie.
* * *
Daily Mail
21st December 1999
‘ROADSIDE RAPIST’ GETS LIFE
Judge calls Gavin Parrie ‘evil, unrepentant and depraved’
By John Smithson
The predator dubbed the ‘Roadside Rapist’ was given a life sentence yesterday, after a nine-week trial at the Old Bailey. Judge Peter Healey condemned Gavin Parrie as ‘evil, unrepentant and depraved’ and recommended he serve a minimum of 15 years. There was uproar in the court after the sentence was announced, with abuse directed at both judge and jury from members of Parrie’s family in the public gallery.
Parrie has always insisted that he is innocent of the rape and attempted rape of seven young women in the Oxford area between January and December 1998. The case hinged on forensic evidence found in Parrie’s lock-up, linking him to one of the victims, which he contended was planted there with the collusion of Thames Valley Police. As he was led away, he was heard issuing death threats against the officer who had been instrumental in his apprehension, saying he would ‘get him’ and he and his family would ‘spend the rest of their lives watching their backs’. The officer in question, Detective Sergeant Adam Fawley, has received a commendation from the Chief Constable for his work on the case.