The Silent Girls: A gripping serial-killer thriller

by Dylan Young

  Shaw seemed to hesitate, his eyelids flickering momentarily as if he were calculating something. But he continued smoothly when he spoke. ‘My ex-wife was drunk on the sofa when that happened.’

  ‘Do you consider yourself to be judge and jury?’

  ‘I consider her not to have been a capable parent.’

  ‘Would you do it again?’

  ‘Like a shot.’

  A long beat of silence followed.

  ‘You do understand that this interview forms a part of your continuing assessment for rehabilitation? You applied for certain privileges to be considered.’

  Shaw’s mouth split into an enormous grin. ‘I wanted to test the waters. I guess it won’t be happening this time.’

  ‘No.’

  Shaw smiled. ‘Then we’ve both fucked up, haven’t we? You need to be better prepared. Looking up notes during an interview is very rude. So is mentioning my daughter. Worse is getting her name wrong. And you need to ensure I don’t put anyone else in the hospital wing, right?’

  ‘You haven’t.’

  Shaw was still smiling. ‘Not yet.’

  The scene on the video erupted with the noise of scraping furniture and screaming as Shaw lunged across the desk out of shot before the watching guard could react. A blur of violent movement followed as Shaw pulled the interviewer across and buried his face into the exposed part of the back of the man’s neck, before the screen froze and went blank.

  ‘Who’s interviewing?’ Shipwright asked after several seconds of loaded silence.

  ‘His name was Conrad. The consultant who normally attended was lecturing at a conference and thought it would be good practice for his junior colleague. Conrad needed twenty stitches and a skin graft. I think he retrained as a GP after this. I got a copy of the interview from a lecture I once attended.’

  ‘What was the lecture called – “How to wind up a five-star psycho without really trying”?’

  ‘Almost. The lecturer used it to illustrate how easy it is to get things very wrong. So, what do you think?’

  ‘I think anyone who kills six people and puts another four in hospital during his prison term is a card-carrying nutter.’ Anna nodded, but Shipwright saw that she was pensive. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘It’s just that there was never an element of paraphilia in Shaw’s crimes. No sexual motive at all. It started out as revenge for his daughter and spiralled up from there. He got a taste for it, literally.’

  Shipwright shook his head. ‘DNA doesn’t lie, Anna.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘When’s Shaw due out?’

  ‘His is a whole life sentence.’

  DCI Shipwright smiled. It lifted the craggy jowls an inch and transformed the grizzly into a teddy bear. ‘You meet the nicest people in this job. Shall we?’

  * * *

  They’d redecorated the interview room. This time there were drab grey walls, black plastic chairs and a metal-legged table with a Formica top. All in all an improvement on the brown, but despite liberal use of a sickly floral air freshener plugged into a socket at floor level, the room stank of old sweat and urine. Shaw looked thinner, harder, his face sunken, skin sallow from a prison tan. Blue bristles ran in a crown above his ears and around the back of his head from where he’d shaved off his remaining hair. He sat slumped and unsmiling, his arms folded, dressed in standard grey prison joggers and sweatshirt. His gaze flitted between Anna and Shipwright. Yet, despite his posture, his eyes brightened as they sat down, calculating and sharp behind his thick glasses.

  The room was equipped with recording facilities and the interview would be videoed. Shaw had declined the presence of a solicitor. Anna did the necessary for the recording.

  ‘Interview at Whitmarsh Prison of Hector Shaw, under caution. Present are Detective Chief Inspector Edward Shipwright and Detective Sergeant Anna Gwynne. For the digital interview recording, the interviewee has declined the offer of legal representation.

  ‘Mr Shaw,’ Anna continued, ‘thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. You understand that you do not have to answer my questions. If you choose not to answer my questions, but this matter is raised in court and you answer the same questions, then the court will ask you to explain why you did not answer here today. The tapes of this interview can be played in court, so that the court will be able to hear what has been said. Please indicate that you understand.’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ Shaw said. ‘What’s this about? And who the fuck are you, anyway?’

  Shipwright leaned forward on the desk, fingers steepled. ‘We, Mr Shaw, are part of a major crimes review task force. What we do is take a fresh look at cases that have gone cold on our patch. The southwest, to be specific. I say, “our patch”, though we end up all over the place interviewing witnesses. And suspects, like you. Amazing what things come to light when they’re looked at from a new perspective. Especially in this high-tech world we now live in.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘Good question. Remember the evening of 15th June 2002?’

  Shaw snorted and shook his head. ‘Yeah. Like it was yesterday.’

  ‘Well, you should. Because that was the evening a fifteen-year-old girl by the name of Tanya Cromer was raped.’

  Shaw continued to smile, but his jaw clenched, the muscles clearly working.

  ‘Tanya fought,’ Anna said. ‘And there was blood. A few spattered smudges on her clothes and under her nails.’

  Shipwright added, ‘She’d fallen out with her boyfriend and everyone thought it was him. But he had an alibi tighter than a duck’s arse and the case went cold.’ He leaned a bit closer. ‘It had rained. The DNA samples were mixed. Pretty hopeless then, but now…’ Shipwright let his eyebrows crawl up towards his hairline.

  ‘Riveting,’ said Shaw. ‘Where’s this going?’

  ‘What the chief inspector means,’ said Anna, ‘is that we’ve made significant advances in terms of lab technology, mathematical models and bio-statistical software since then. These days our forensic scientists can successfully separate contributors in mixed samples.’

  ‘Couldn’t have put it better, Sergeant,’ Shipwright said. ‘And guess what? One of those separated samples matches your DNA, Mr Shaw.’

  Shaw looked like he wanted to say something, but his mouth stayed shut.

  Anna watched for one of the slow blinks that had marked his aggression in the tape they had viewed. So far it hadn’t happened. ‘So where were you on the evening of 15th June 2002, Mr Shaw?’ she asked.

  Shaw still said nothing.

  ‘For the DIR, the interviewee refuses to answer.’

  Shipwright pressed on. ‘Three months after Tanya reported the attack to the police she went missing.’

  Three seconds of silence followed. So far it was a draw in the staring contest.

  ‘If you want to say something, now is the time, sonny,’ Shipwright said.

  Anna pressed him further. ‘If you know where she is, tell us. Give this poor girl’s family a way out of purgatory.’

  Still Shaw remained silent. His eyes looked back at them, his corneas reflecting the harsh ceiling lights, his irises the colour of oil spill on a grey sea. Anna waited and then said, ‘For the record, the interviewee has refused to respond.’ She looked at Shipwright. He shrugged in response.

  ‘I have to inform you, Hector Shaw, that there is a positive match between your DNA and that found at the scene,’ Shipwright said. ‘Following a conversation with the senior prosecutor, I have the authority to charge you with the rape of Tanya Cromer contrary to the Sexual Offences Act, 1956. Do you understand this charge against you?’

  Shaw glared.

  ‘We need an answer.’

  Another long beat of seething silence followed, until Shaw’s eyes narrowed and his lips pursed like he’d thought of the world’s best joke and he said, ‘How about I volunteer for an identity parade?’

  ‘Going to be difficult without the victim. But then you know that wel
l enough. You’re in for life, so I suspect there’s no point us appealing to your sense of closure,’ Shipwright said.

  Shaw shifted in his chair. He sat up and unfolded his arms, hands on his lap, his gaze dropping to them for a moment before coming back up again. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I know all about closure.’

  Shipwright sat back. ‘Right, we’ll be in touch. You might want to have a solicitor with you next time.’

  ‘Time is now eleven twenty a.m. and we are terminating the interview.’ Anna pressed the button to end the recording. Shaw blinked slowly. Anna caught it and felt her pulse canter.

  ‘What about the rest of the sample?’ Shaw asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said the DNA came from a mixed sample. Whose was the other sample?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Anna said.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter. We have yours,’ Shipwright said, pushing away from the desk.

  Shaw kept his gaze fixed on Anna. ‘And what is your interpretation of that, Sergeant?’

  Anna barely paused before replying. ‘Who else was there?’

  Shaw nodded and offered up a wintry smile. ‘Do I look like someone who’d gang-rape a girl to you?’

  He was challenging her, but all his question achieved was to trigger an instant unvoiced thought. I don’t know what monsters are meant to look like, Mr Shaw, but you’ll do.

  When she didn’t answer immediately, Shaw went on, ‘I’ll let you work that out, OK? You up for that, Anna?’

  His words contained no menace but they hung in her ears like the ringing of a great bell.

  The moment was broken by Shipwright, pragmatic as ever. ‘Of course, it would save a great deal of time and effort if you told us, since you were clearly there.’

  Shaw turned his face towards the chief inspector and nodded. ‘Let me think about that, Mr Shipwright.’

  Shipwright snorted and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  They’d got halfway across the room when Shaw spoke again. ‘Did they tell you I had a daughter once, Anna? I expect you came across it in your research, didn’t you?’

  It made her pause. Beside her, Shipwright shook his head. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered, but she’d already hesitated. The minuscule delay gave Shaw the opening he’d been waiting for. ‘She’d be about your age, Anna. Remember that.’

  Shipwright took Anna’s arm and ushered her out.

  Shaw had seen something, or sensed something about her, Anna was convinced of it.

  That was unusual, she thought.

  Anna’s sister, Kate, often commented on how she’d developed her professional ‘death stare’ to perfection, though there was nothing calculated about it. It was simply the way the muscles of her face arranged themselves when her mind was mining deeply for information. This happened most often in situations where the conversation was less than demanding. But sometimes, too, when she was concentrating hard. Most people interpreted it as inscrutability, or, less generously, arrogance, when it was nothing of the kind. Few, if any, saw it for what it truly was. Shaw seemed to be emotionally intelligent enough to pick up on it even in the brief time she’d been in his presence. He’d caught it and thrown it back at her with his question.

  And what is your interpretation of that, Sergeant?

  His words stayed with her all the way to the car. She’d seen photographs of his daughter. Small for her age, but pretty, with her mother’s smile and her father’s big, short-sighted eyes. The photograph showed Abbie with grey eyeshadow, and pink and black hair hanging low over her brow. The sweatshirt she’d worn had ‘My Chemical Romance’ in Gothic letters across the chest.

  Yet, even worse than recalling Abbie and her untimely death, was remembering the way Shaw had spoken her own name. Slowly, emphatically.

  You up for that, Anna?

  The words echoed inside her head as she gunned the engine in the car park, and each time they did it made her scalp crawl.

  Two

  They made a comfort stop at a McDonald’s on the way to the motorway. Anna ordered coffee for both, explaining to a sceptical Shipwright that it wasn’t at all bad since the fast-food chain got their coffee act together.

  ‘Hmm.’ Shipwright grunted and lifted one eyebrow. ‘I’ll soak mine up with a cheeseburger then, thanks, and none of that bloody pickle stuff.’

  Anna ordered. Shipwright paid. He downed the burger in four bites and then took himself outside for a smoke. Anna finished her coffee before going back to the car and phoning Justin Holder, a detective constable and the third and youngest member of their unit.

  ‘How did it go, Sarge?’ Holder asked. Expectant, enthusiastic. Like a kid at a fair.

  ‘Shaw did two cartwheels and offered me an interest-free loan after giving the boss a kiss.’

  Holder chuckled. ‘Yeah, I bet.’ His accent was pure Acton. Like Anna, he was not an Avon & Somerset local.

  ‘You?’

  ‘All good. Chasing up the Ryder files from Northumbria. But you’re on the way back, right?’

  She caught the anxious tone in his responses. Holder was fresh but he wasn’t usually needy. ‘What’s up, Justin?’

  ‘Rain Man stuck his head around the door asking when you’d be back, that’s all.’

  ‘Was he carrying a bottle of champagne?’

  ‘No. But he had that look on his face.’

  ‘Look?’

  ‘Yeah. A sort of desperate Labrador look.’

  ‘You mean the “it’s not important, honestly, but any time within the next five seconds will do” look?’

  ‘Yeah. Trisha was in his office for twenty minutes and I haven’t seen her since.’

  Trisha Spedding was the squad’s civilian support. A skilled criminal analyst with a cut-to-the-chase attitude and mind. Like the rest of them, she was on the squad at Shipwright’s request. Rain Man – Holder’s laddish nickname for their department head, Superintendent Rainsford – kept an arm’s-length approach to operational tasks. His direct involvement usually meant something urgent.

  ‘So, no victory celebration, then? Right, I’ll warn the boss. Get the kettle on for about four. He wants to call in on the CPS.’

  ‘Rainsford wants to know when we’re back, eh? That does not bode well.’ Shipwright was back in the car, still clutching his coffee, a miasma of stale tobacco surrounding him like an old coat. He sipped from the cup, grimaced, lowered his window and emptied the contents onto the road.

  ‘I reckon it’s a surprise party, sir,’ Anna said as the damp November chill whistled in and ejected the car’s heat.

  ‘You will watch out for those flying pigs, won’t you, Sergeant.’ Shipwright powered up the window. ‘One day, one of them will dump right on your head. Whatever it is Mr Rainsford wants, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m on parental duty tonight at a concert. My youngest is a goat in Old Macdonald Had A Farm, the opera.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Anna said.

  Shipwright sighed. ‘I’ll thank you to leave the jokes to me, Sergeant.’ He pressed a lever at the bottom of his seat and the backrest tilted rearwards. ‘Now, let me meditate for ten minutes while that cheeseburger negotiates my digestive tract, especially that tricky bend near my liver.’

  Anna winced.

  ‘You mark my words, one day you will also find a post-lunch snooze essential.’

  ‘Just ten minutes, sir?’

  ‘Twenty max.’

  Shipwright settled back and closed his eyes. Within two minutes he was in a deep and ugly sleep, mouth open, soft palate vibrating noisily.

  Anna didn’t mind. She relished the opportunity for reflection. They’d had a good result. Worth the trip to see that look on Shaw’s rat-guilty face. And yet Anna felt a niggle. Shaw had denied any previous crimes and there was no record of violence prior to the killings that he’d been prosecuted for. Rape was a big departure from his modus operandi and nothing had been linked to him until the DNA hit flagged him on the database. She could still recall the words Professor
Jane Markham had prefaced her lecture with when she’d used Shaw’s interview as a teaching aid. Markham, a forensic psychiatrist, taught Anna as a visiting professor during her three years of a criminology degree, and her words had become Anna’s mantra:

  Almost anything you hear in an interview with a patient suffering from a personality disorder should be taken with a healthy shovelful of salt. For most of these patients, lying is a way of life. Many are articulate, many are intelligent. Both of which make your job all the harder. It is you’ – she’d pointed randomly towards her audience – ‘who will be asked to make judgements upon which will often rest the freedom of the individual and the safety of the public. So, let’s take a look at some examples…

  An adrenalin squirt rippled through Anna. This job could be frustrating, boring, a real time-suck, and drive you to numb yourself with alcohol. But it could also be amazingly satisfying. There’d be justice for Tanya Cromer at long last, and some sort of closure for her relatives. It didn’t matter how clichéd it sounded to anyone listening, bringing the perpetrators of harm to justice was what gave her the most satisfaction. It was why she put up with the crap hours and road-trip meals. Why she did the job.

  Her thoughts drifted to the initial interview again. Now that Shaw was implicated, she’d drop Prof. Markham a line. She’d appreciate that. It would be a chance to tell her old mentor that at least one of her students was using what she taught to good effect. Even if some of Anna’s own work colleagues thought it was not the best use of a stretched and salami-sliced budget.

  The Southwest Regional Major Crimes Review Task Force began with twenty people culled from half a dozen different forces in a collaborative splurge, but as funds diminished over a two-year period, they were now limping along on what Rainsford could crumble out of a very thin slice of financial cake.

  It didn’t matter that over the last two years they’d closed twenty cases in five different force areas. Cold cases weren’t fashionable, and they definitely weren’t sexy. But Anna knew that working with an old warhorse like Shipwright was worth its weight in gold. The DCI defined ‘old school’. So old that he still remembered writing on slate with chalk, or so he kept telling her. He could spot a bullshitter from two hundred yards, possessed an elephant’s memory, and, come to think of it, quite a bit of its gait. There’d been barriers to clamber over, but Anna felt she was at least over the barbed wire and heading for the trenches. So long as she kept looking, she knew she’d keep finding little nuggets of buried gold, which weren’t in any training manual, invariably delivered in Shipwright’s laconic style.