The Whole Truth

by Hunter, Cara

  ‘O-kay,’ says Ev slowly, wondering where this is going. ‘And your point is?’

  ‘My point is that up till now he’s just been working his way through the drawings one at a time. But the one he’s doing now – it’s right near the end. There are loads of blank pages in between. He must have deliberately chosen to do it.’

  ‘So –?’

  ‘That’s just it. What he’s doing now is George and the Dragon. The colour-by-numbers thing says to do the dragon in different shades of green, but Tobin’s completely ignored it. He’s never done that with any of the pictures before. I checked.’

  Ev frowns. ‘So what colour is he doing the dragon?’

  ‘Red,’ says Somer. ‘All the same shade of red.’ She makes a face. ‘And that was when I remembered this.’

  She points at one of the photos on the board. A shot of Morgan taken from behind. His head and his back and his neck, and the tattoo on his left shoulder.

  It’s a red dragon.

  * * *

  The custody sergeant pushes the door open with a clang, then he stands back to let the lawyer through.

  ‘Let me know when you’ve finished.’

  Penelope McHugh nods. ‘Thank you.’ Then she waits until the sergeant has lumbered back down the corridor and out of sight before stepping forward into the cell.

  Her client is sitting on the narrow bed, his head in his hands, the toast and cereal untouched on a tray. There are huge dank stains under his armpits. It shouldn’t surprise her; she’s been doing this job a long time and she’s had suspected murderers for clients before. But never, thus far at least, a serving Detective Inspector.

  She’s breathing as shallowly as she can. The hot stagnant air is riddled with sweat and piss and despair.

  ‘We could have done this in a consultation room, you know.’

  He looks up. ‘I could do without another perp walk of shame upstairs.’

  It’s horrifying, how quickly a human being can fall apart. She knows this man – she’s known him for years – but seeing him now, he’s a wraith of his former self. All that quiet authority, that sense of latent power held in check – it’s all gone. He looks hollowed out, scourged, paranoia ground like dirt into the lines around his eyes –

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Even his voice has diminished.

  McHugh takes a step closer. ‘OK. Shoot.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking – this whole thing – the DNA, the car, the lack of semen – it makes no bloody sense.’

  She gives an acid smile. ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘So much so that there’s only one explanation. Only one way I can even begin to make it all add up.’

  She frowns. He’s talking too fast, his eyes are too wide. If she didn’t know any better she’d think he was deranged. Or high.

  ‘The evidence – it was planted. I’m being framed.’

  It drops like lead. The guilty ones – they all say that. And she really didn’t want this man to be one of them.

  He must have seen something in her face because he gets up and comes closer. She has to force herself to stand her ground.

  ‘Look, I know how this must sound – I’ve heard cons come out with shit like that for twenty years. You think I’m either guilty or crazy, right? Or most likely both. I’m supposed to be a fucking police officer and here I am, babbling like a bloody maniac.’

  She starts to demur but he ploughs on.

  ‘Just hear me out – please? – I’ve gone over it again and again and it’s just too coherent – too, I don’t know, pat –’ He looks at her, as anxious as a small child. ‘Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  She frowns. ‘I think so. You’re saying that it all hangs together too well to be just a coincidence?’

  His eyes light up. ‘Exactly. Because it all fits, it all works. The evidence is so perfectly put together, all it needs is gift wrap. But crime just isn’t like that – not real crime, unpremeditated crime. It’s messy and random and the perpetrator always fucks at least one thing up. For it to be this perfect someone had to make it so.’ He stops, takes a breath. ‘This whole thing was planned. That’s the only theory that makes sense.’

  Penelope McHugh isn’t so sure about that. There’s at least one other possible explanation. He just said as much himself. This man has two decades of experience in the art and science of killing. If anyone could get away with murder, it’s him.

  ‘And the person who did it,’ he says, the words coming in a rush now as if he doesn’t have much time, ‘they’re clever. Very clever. They know about police procedures and they have such a fucking enormous grudge against me they’re prepared to kill to get revenge.’

  He stares at her as though it’s so obvious now that she must have got there already.

  ‘I know who did this. And so do you.’

  * * *

  Ten miles away, in Abingdon, Alex Fawley is propped up against the pillows in her sister’s spare bedroom. It’s hard to be invisible if you’re eight months pregnant, but she’s doing her best. Not to take up too much space in the already-too-crowded sitting room. Not to make every meal about her and how worried she is about Adam. Not to hog the bathroom when Gerry’s trying to get ready for work. So even though Nell’s in the garden now, with the kids, both off school for yet another Inset day, Alex said she was tired and was going to have a nap. It’s cooler upstairs, with the curtains drawn, but still too hot to get comfortable in her state. She can hear their voices drifting up to her from the patio below. Not too loud, because they think she’s sleeping. Just the usual minor skirmishes between the boys, the dog barking, Nell trying to keep the peace. Ordinary, happy family noise. Right now – knowing where Adam is and why – it’s enough to break her heart.

  She checks her watch and it is – finally – nearly time. Her pulse quickens a little as she pulls her tablet towards her and hooks in her earphones.

  * * *

  [THEME SONG – AARON NEVILLE COVER VERSION OF ‘I SHALL BE RELEASED’]

  [JOCELYN]

  As we heard in the last episode, on 12th December 1998 Lucy Henderson was attacked on her way home from work. She was thrown into a van, driven to an abandoned industrial site and brutally raped. Once again, plaster dust was found on her shoes, and once again her attacker left no DNA. Lucy was 23, and a graduate student at Marchmain College. She was also the Roadside Rapist’s last known victim.

  Not that anyone knew that at the time. After the best part of a year and no apparent progress in tracking this assailant down, public panic was at fever pitch. Questions were being asked in Parliament, and the Thames Valley Chief Constable was under pressure to resign.

  And then, at last, the breakthrough everyone had been waiting for. On January 3rd 1999 the police made an arrest.

  They had their man.

  I’m Jocelyn Naismith, and I’m the co-founder of The Whole Truth, a not-for-profit organization that campaigns to overturn miscarriages of justice. This is Righting the Wrongs, series 3: The Roadside Rapist Redeemed?

  Chapter five: Pursuit

  [‘VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE’ – JOAN JETT]

  [JOCELYN]

  The story of how Gavin Parrie came to be arrested is perhaps the strangest and most worrying aspect of this whole case. That morning, Alexandra Sheldon, the Roadside Rapist’s third victim, filled up her car with petrol at a garage on the Oxford ring road. She was queuing up to pay when she noticed something – something that gave her a violent and terrifying reaction. It wasn’t something she saw or heard, it was something she smelt.

  It was a distinctive, unmistakable odour – an odour she later described in court as ‘sweet, like overripe fruit’. She’d only ever encountered it once before. On September 4th 1998. The night she was attacked.

  Dr Anisur Malik is an acknowledged expert in this field, and assessed the evidence in the Parrie investigation as part of The Whole Truth case review.

  [DR ANISUR MALIK]

  ‘Olfactory stimuli
are particularly powerful because they bypass the thalamus and connect directly to the forebrain. Hence their increased capacity to trigger recall.’

  [JOCELYN]

  In other words, smells don’t get processed by the thinking part of your mind – that’s why their impact is so strong and immediate. But that’s also why we need to be very careful indeed when considering whether this sort of memory is reliable ‘evidence’.

  So where had this distinctive smell come from? Do you remember back in Episode 2 we talked about how Gavin Parrie had developed Type 1 diabetes? Not many people know this, but if this kind of diabetes isn’t managed properly it can lead to a noticeable smell on the breath. A smell like overripe fruit …

  By the time of that encounter in the petrol station, Gavin’s promising new start back in Cowley was crashing and burning. His new girlfriend had left him and he was struggling to get work. He was behind on his rent and hardly ever seeing his kids, who were still with their mother in Manchester. With all that going on, it comes as no surprise to find he was neglecting his health.

  So no one’s disputing that Gavin was in that petrol station that morning, queuing up to pay behind Alexandra Sheldon. And no one’s disputing that she did indeed smell what she says she did. What we are disputing is whether the man in the queue was the same man as the one who’d attacked her.

  [DR ANISUR MALIK]

  ‘What concerns me in this case was the severity of the reaction. It was only four months after Ms Sheldon had been assaulted, and she may well have been suffering from PTSD. Twenty years ago, the medical profession wasn’t as well informed on this issue as it is now.

  Smelling such an evocative odour for the first time since the incident could easily have triggered a terrifying flashback. The body would go into fight-or-flight mode – the heart would be racing and the brain would no longer be functioning normally.

  As a consequence, law enforcement professionals need to exercise particular caution when dealing with the testimony provided by victims in circumstances like these.’

  [JOCELYN]

  And all the more so because the next thing Alexandra Sheldon saw was Gavin Parrie coming back out to the forecourt and getting into a white van. Even though the police never spoke publicly about the plaster dust found on the last two victims, the fact that the Roadside Rapist had started to use a van had been reported, and extensively.

  Alexandra Sheldon reacted immediately – she didn’t think once, never mind twice. She got straight into her own car and followed that van. Ten minutes later the driver pulled up in front of a set of lock-up garages off the Botley Road, parked and got out.

  [‘MR X’]

  ‘She watched him reach up above the garage door and retrieve a key, go inside for a few minutes, and then come back out and walk round the corner out of sight.’

  [JOCELYN]

  That’s the former police officer we heard from in Episode 3, who worked on the Parrie case.

  [‘MR X’]

  ‘Ms Sheldon called DS Fawley at once and he advised her to proceed as quickly as possible to a public place and wait there for the police to arrive. She said she would go to the nearby Co-op store, which was only a few minutes away. A police response team was immediately dispatched, and shortly after 12 noon Mr Parrie was arrested in the Fox & Geese pub.’

  [JOCELYN]

  Adam Fawley arrived at the scene at approximately 12.25, by which time a full CSI search was underway in the lock-up, and Gavin was on his way to St Aldate’s police station in the back of a squad car. Alexandra Sheldon had been at the Co-op all that time.

  Or had she? The Co-op didn’t have CCTV, and no one there could remember the exact time she arrived.

  As for Gavin, he’s always contended that – far from going straight to that Co-op, as instructed – Alexandra Sheldon broke into his lock-up, using the key she’d just seen him put back above the garage door. And once she got in, she planted some strands of her own hair on the floor, knowing the police would find them.

  You’re probably shaking your head right now, aren’t you? You’re saying to yourself, ‘She was an intelligent woman, a lawyer, an ethical person – would she really go so far as to manufacture evidence?’

  But think about it for a moment. Alexandra Sheldon was absolutely convinced Gavin Parrie was the man who’d attempted to rape her. She was also desperate to ensure this man was caught – only a few days earlier, the fifth victim had committed suicide at the tragically young age of 19. Alexandra knew that. She also knew the police had no leads, and even if the man she’d followed to Botley really was the rapist, there was no guarantee there’d be any evidence in the lock-up that would prove it. He could walk away scot-free, and be able to assault even more women, ruin even more lives.

  So who can blame her if she concluded – in the heightened state of anxiety and fear brought on by the flashback she was experiencing – that she simply had to do something? She had to make sure this man was stopped, once and for all.

  And it was in her power to do it.

  [‘MR X’]

  ‘Whatever Gavin Parrie may believe, there was never any evidence whatsoever that Ms Sheldon planted evidence to incriminate him. Neither her fingerprints nor DNA were discovered, either on the garage key or inside the lock-up. It’s also important to note that the strands of hair recovered were over 10 inches long. Ms Sheldon had had long hair at the time she was attacked but she’d had it cut very short immediately thereafter. In effect, even if she’d wanted to frame Gavin Parrie, she no longer had the “evidence” she’d have needed to do that.’

  [JOCELYN]

  No one’s disputing the length of Alexandra Sheldon’s hair that day, or when she’d had it cut. But as every woman knows, we sometimes have items in our handbags, like combs and brushes, that have hair caught in them – hair that could have been there for weeks or even months.

  And one thing we do definitely know: it was the hair found in that search that clinched Gavin’s conviction. That and that alone.

  Because everything else was circumstantial. It could all be explained as mere coincidence. The diabetes, the fact that Gavin’s brother Bobby was a plasterer and Gavin had been known to borrow Bobby’s van when his own was off the road (it’s worth stressing at this point that Bobby always flatly denied having lent Gavin his van on the dates of the attacks, though it was impossible to prove that one way or the other).

  There was one further piece of evidence the police had, which they believed was compelling, but the law as it stood at the time prevented them using it in court. This was the fact that Gavin had been questioned about the attack on Paula, the 16-year-old girl we talked about in Episode 2, who’d been assaulted in Manchester before the Roadside Rapes began.

  But even if that fact couldn’t be brought up in court, it was still hugely significant in Gavin’s case. Why? Because as soon as Thames Valley found out about Paula, they basically stopped looking for anyone else. As far as they were concerned, Gavin committed eight attacks: one in Manchester and seven in Oxford.

  In their minds, it all fitted: the identical MOs, the fact that Gavin had been living in both cities at the relevant times, even the Oxford rapist’s use of a plastic bag – the police theory was that having narrowly escaped being identified by Paula, Gavin started putting plastic bags over his victims’ faces, to make sure it didn’t happen again.

  But we at The Whole Truth believe they were wrong. More than that, we believe they failed. They failed Gavin Parrie and his family, especially his children, who’ve grown up without their dad. They failed the public; and most importantly they failed the victims. Like all the country’s police forces, Thames Valley CID have a duty to investigate serious and violent crimes ‘effectively, independently and promptly’, as confirmed by the UK Supreme Court earlier this year, in relation to the infamous John Worboys ‘black cab rapist’ case. And, in our opinion, Thames Valley simply did not do that in Gavin’s case.

  Back in 1999, Gavin Parrie was convinced that th
e crucial evidence against him had been planted, and he’d been framed. He told anyone who would listen that he was telling the truth, but no one believed him.

  They do now.

  And in the next episode we’ll tell you why.

  [UNDER BED OF ‘TIME FOR TRUTH’ – THE JAM]

  I’m Jocelyn Naismith and this is Righting the Wrongs. You can listen to this and other podcasts from The Whole Truth on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

  [FADE OUT]

  * * *

  Alex’s heart is pounding, drumming so hard against her ribcage she feels bruised from the inside. Even in her overactive middle-of-the-night paranoia, she’d never thought it could be as bad as this. She gets up and starts pacing the small room, feeling a surge of hatred for Jocelyn Naismith – this woman who thinks she has the answer, who wants the truth, who just tramples about in other people’s lives, other people’s pain, not knowing or caring what wreckage she might leave behind. The baby bumps and shifts fretfully against her; she feels like she’s pumping poisonous adrenaline into her own child.

  She sits back heavily on the bed, and reaches for her tablet to check when the next episode is due. Three days – three days? – she can’t wait that long, can’t not know that long. And why did it have to be now, of all times? When she can’t talk to Adam, can’t ask him what to do –

  She puts a hand to her mouth, pushing down a sudden panic. How often has she heard her husband say there’s no such thing as coincidence – not in policework. What if the timing isn’t random at all?

  * * *

  ‘Say that again?’

  The team are gathered round the whiteboard. Not just Ev now, but Gis, Quinn, Baxter, Asante.

  ‘I was looking through Tobin Fisher’s colouring book,’ says Somer. ‘He’s doing a picture of St George and the Dragon. And he’s not doing the dragon in green, like he’s supposed to. He’s doing it in red.’ She points at the photo on the board. ‘Exactly like that.’