The Silent Girls: A gripping serial-killer thriller

by Dylan Young

  Anna tried not to think of what Charles Willis must have endured knowing he’d been responsible for his brother’s death. Guilt like that never truly left you. She had no real answers to her questions, no pattern yet, but there was some comfort in knowing they were definitely the right questions to be asking.

  Ten

  On Saturday morning, Anna’s work phone rang at a little after ten. She was surprised to see Shipwright’s name come up.

  ‘Sir? How are you?’

  ‘Sitting here bored to tears waiting my turn for an angiogram. Never mind about me, how are you, Anna?’

  ‘Good question, sir.’

  ‘Fancy a chat?’

  ‘Not sure that we should over the phone.’

  ‘Who said anything about a phone? Come to the infirmary.’

  ‘OK. What are the visiting hours?’

  ‘Inspector Gwynne, you are leading a murder investigation. They are not going to ask you to wait outside. Flash your bloody warrant card, woman.’

  She left the flat and went to her favourite coffee shop. Bean and Gun was run by a couple of thin Italian guys who flirted outrageously with virtually every customer. She loved their coffee, but went there as much to prove to herself that she was not a nun. She knew the two boys were a couple but somehow that made it even more fun.

  She took a flat white, which oozed a gorgeous liquorice aroma, to a corner table and spent half an hour reading the remainder of Lentz’s chapter on the Woodsman. His portrayal of the detectives involved was full of hyperbole, but it served its purpose as a reminder to Anna, and provided a glimpse into public opinion of the time.

  Detective Superintendent Ewan Briggs was a thirty-year veteran with vast experience of every facet of criminality when he and his team were brought in to investigate the murder of Emily Risman.

  Briggs had served in the Royal Navy before becoming a police officer. He brought to the job a discipline and ethos that he’d learned in the service of his country and applied it in the service of the people who suffered at the hands of criminals. By the time he commanded the Central Counties Regional Crime squad he had hunted rapists, blackmailers, drug dealers and murderers.

  * * *

  ‘With the newspapers baying for blood and criticising our every move, it became almost impossible to carry out normal police work. The kind of routine interviewing and checking of facts that get you there in the end. They wanted a big splash, a chase, a showdown or a confession. Of course, what would have really pleased them would have been another murder. I fell out with the press over this Woodsman nonsense. They were like wild dogs.’

  Detective Superintendent Ewan Briggs

  Working with him on the team was another experienced officer, Detective Inspector John Wyngate, who had a reputation as a policeman who cared deeply about his job, but more importantly about people and the victims of crime. He also cared about right and wrong and justice, along with philosophical aspects of the law; things so often at odds with one another in today’s politically correct society. It was Wyngate’s promise to the parents of Emily Risman that drove him to ensure that the Woodsman would be brought to book.

  Lastly, and crucial to the eventual capture of Neville Cooper, was Detective Sergeant David Maddox. A charismatic and dogged investigator who never baulked at putting in the long and extra hours needed to pull together the many strands of information that the murder investigation threw up. It was Maddox’s work in exploring Cooper’s dubious alibi that finally clinched his capture.

  Three musketeers if ever there were any, Anna thought, as she closed the book.

  * * *

  By midday she was walking through coronary care into a male four-bedder with every bed occupied. Shipwright was sitting up in a chair, leads from his chest attached to a monitor. There were newspapers strewn over the blue blanket covering the bed, and a radio with a long snake of earphone dangling on the bedside table.

  ‘I brought Lucozade. Didn’t know if coffee was allowed and this has,’ she held up the bottle and read off the label, ‘the unmistakably awesome taste, now without the calories.’

  ‘Oh, joy,’ Shipwright said, grinning.

  He looked somehow diminished. She was used to seeing him in larger-than-life control. Here, he was but another one of life’s victims and it bothered her. ‘You look…’ She made a play of searching for the adjective.

  ‘Well? Like crap? Don’t leave me hanging!’

  A couple of patients looked up. She finished the sentence. ‘You look OK, is what I was going to say.’

  ‘Good. All that clean living has to pay off some time. Now, let’s get the unpleasant details out of the way. I am not dying. I’m going to have an angiogram and maybe a stent or more if needed. Miraculously, in the time since I phoned, they’ve scheduled that for today. So, this is your last chance before I’m whisked off to a catheterisation lab, and I quote, so they can do whatever voodoo it is they do.’

  ‘So, what should we talk about?’

  ‘I want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, resting?’

  Shipwright waved a hand towards the bed. ‘I am, as you can see. But I’d rather have something to distract me up here’ – he tapped the side of his head – ‘so that I don’t have to think about someone pushing bloody wires through my veins.’

  ‘It’s not exactly private here, sir.’

  ‘Draw the curtains. Best we can do.’

  Anna did as asked, going over everything that had happened and what the team had done. And then she told him in hushed tones about Harris’s attitude.

  Shipwright snorted. ‘Always a hard-nosed bugger. Don’t let him push you around. Rainsford has your back.’

  ‘Harris is going after Cooper.’

  ‘Of course he bloody well is. No smoke without a bloody great bonfire in Harris’s narrow little mind. That’s the way he thinks. The way a lot of people up there still think. So, you’re either going to have to prove him right, or prove him wrong by solving the original case once and for all. Stick to your guns.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get my head around the CCRC squad.’

  ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did you know them?’

  ‘Briggs, slightly. The Woodsman case made him. He went from zero to hero in the press. Maddox, I didn’t know. Poor bugger took the brunt of the criticism later, though at the time everyone thought he’d just done a bloody good job. He was the CCRC’s Rottweiler, there was no doubt about that. But he ended up being crucified and it got to him in the end.’

  ‘Do you know when he died?’

  ‘Must be a few years ago now.’

  ‘What about Wyngate?’

  ‘I did a spell with Wyngate in Thames Valley. Bit of a dark horse. Never quite worked him out.’

  Anna remained puzzled. ‘From what I’ve read, the media had the squad under the cosh. What do Briggs and Wyngate think now, do you reckon?’

  ‘Are you asking me if they feel foolish or resentful? Praying that a retrial will exonerate them? I wouldn’t put it past Briggs. As for Wyngate, who knows? Look, I know this is bloody hard. There’s what’s going on now and what went on then. But don’t get sidetracked by any of it. Open mind, Anna. It’s what you’re good at.’

  Shipwright was right.

  He watched her nod and then asked, ‘Talking of sidetracks, where are we regarding our friend Hector Shaw?’

  There it was again, that word ‘friend’. Surprising just how often people used it as an aphorism. Even Shipwright. And she wasn’t sure just why it rankled so much in this context. But it did. Still…

  Anna trod on her musings and suppressed the wince that wanted to show itself. ‘Nothing more yet, but Professor Markham got in touch. I’m not sure how, but I think she may be useful to us.’

  Shipwright tilted his head and his eyes became slits. She recognised it as a signal of wariness.

  ‘Is there something I should know?’ he asked.

  ‘Only t
hat she was surprised to hear that we’d tagged him in a sexual assault case.’

  ‘Like you, then.’

  ‘There is nothing in his history to suggest that kind of paraphilia.’

  ‘We didn’t plant that DNA, Anna.’

  ‘I know that, sir. But why did Shaw go on about the other part of the mixed sample like he did?’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted to put a stone in your shoe. From the sound of it he succeeded. You have lots of balls in the air, Anna. But I know you’ll cope. Let the CPS handle Tanya Cromer’s link to Shaw. As for Nia Hopkins, you’re there as an observer, so observe. And treat Emily Risman’s case as if it’s happening now. You know the drill. You’ve started interviews?’

  Anna nodded. She briefed him on Osbourne and Willis.

  ‘Visited the crime scene yet?’

  She shook her head this time.

  ‘Then get down there. Soak it up. Let that Anna Gwynne brain kick into gear. But no flying solo, Inspector.’

  Anna scrunched one corner of her mouth involuntarily. Something she’d done since she was a child whenever she was caught out.

  ‘I mean it. I know you like to, but this is too big to crack alone. Use the team. Our team.’

  Anna brought both hands up, palms forward at shoulder level, surrendering to Shipwright’s shot across the bows. ‘OK.’

  The curtain twitched open and Mrs Shipwright’s face peered in. ‘Oh, good, it’s just you. For a minute, I wondered what was going on.’

  ‘Fran, I’m sorry.’ Anna stood.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. He’s been going slowly mad.’ She looked at her husband. ‘So, this afternoon then?’

  ‘I’ll miss the bloody rugby.’

  Fran threw Anna a glance. ‘See what I have to put up with?’ But her lips trembled as she said the words and her eyes brimmed. Shipwright saw it. He stood up and they embraced. Anna read the signals and took her leave, but not before he left her with a welcome approbation.

  ‘Show them what you can do, Anna.’

  * * *

  At six, a relieved Fran called to say that Shipwright was out of theatre. They’d stented two of his arteries and he’d gone straight to ITU and would be out of commission for a few days. ‘Thanks for calling to see him today, Anna. It meant a lot to him. He’s felt so useless.’

  ‘It’s me that should be thanking him.’

  ‘He thinks the world of you, you know that.’

  ‘The feeling, Mrs Shipwright, is totally mutual.’

  ‘Anyway, go out and celebrate. It’s Saturday night. Anything planned?’

  Another hour making notes about the Woodsman à la Eric Lentz; Dine in for a Tenner, which I’ll split in two and refrigerate one half for Monday night; two glasses of wine; some chocolate; a Scandi noir on television at nineish; then bed. Adrenalin junky that I am, I have it all laid out, thanks… ‘Oh, you know, see how it goes.’

  Not a lie as such, but enough to feed the conventional expectation. She’d learned to do that a long time ago.

  Fran sighed. ‘Oh, to be young again.’

  * * *

  Sunday arrived foggy and cool, but behind the mist the sun lurked tantalisingly. When it finally broke through, Anna was halfway through a five-mile run. The first and last miles were urban; Bristol pavements heading north from her flat. But the middle loop was well worth it. Badock’s Wood was a local nature reserve in a limestone valley. An oasis of broad-leafed trees and grassland in the heart of urban sprawl. She tried to get there at least a couple of times a week. Quite apart from the aerobic benefits, what it did for her mind and soul was equally important. It provided space for her eyes and ears and, if she was lucky, little moments of solitude. She’d grown up in Pendare, half an hour north of Cardiff, a town that had suffered greatly from the loss of heavy industry. Even so, within a twenty-minute walk of her house she’d be in the open country of hills and moorland. It came as a surprise to her to learn how much she missed that when she moved to the city: first London for college and now Bristol. She needed her runs to the woods as much as she needed water or air.

  Her circuit began and ended in Horfield Common, just a few yards from her door. The sharpness of the air made her chest burn from the final sprint. She drank thirstily from the bottle she carried in a tiny backpack and stretched her limbs on a low wall. Endorphins suitably boosted, she re-entered the flat, opened the curtains and tried not to see the mess in her living room. It was more like a second incident room now. She needed to get on, to interview Briggs and Wyngate. Resisting the urge to engage with the stacked files and papers, she showered, made herself a coffee, and by eleven was in the car and on the way to Kate’s.

  Her little sister by a year and a bit, Kate had married the local boy she’d met in the summer before university. The relationship had survived against the odds. He worked in his family’s haulage business and, according to their mother, Kate had ‘married well’. She lived in a new-build detached property on the edge of a small estate, within three miles of where the Gwynne girls had grown up, which meant that the journey Anna was making that morning was a very familiar one. Mist hung over the Severn as she crossed the bridge, but the roads were clear, with the M4 as quiet as it ever was and the valley road she took north after passing Cardiff almost deserted. It meant that she drove through her sister’s wrought-iron gates and onto the yellow gravel drive ahead of time, for once.

  The door opened when she was half a dozen yards from it. Rob Riordan stood in the doorway, grinning. He was big, broad-chested and, of necessity, something of a gym fiend, because he still turned out on Saturdays for the local rugby team. He shifted his hips to one side as something wriggled to get out. Harry Riordan, a smaller version of his father by some three feet, burst through the door, yelling, ‘Aunty Annaaaaaah!’

  Three seconds later, she was being hugged and thrown instantly into a conversation about a cat who’d sat on the fence and licked its paw, the most important news in the world in Harry’s three-and-half-year-old opinion. Rob hugged her around Harry, apologising for his son’s jabbering. One of the good guys, Anna loved Rob because she knew he took good care of her little sister. He, like his son, was on Anna’s very limited hugger list.

  The kitchen had her salivating in seconds, the smell of roast pork and duck-fat roasties as seductive as any drug. Kate, in an apron and wielding a slotted spoon, beamed at her.

  ‘Hello, stranger.’ The usual teasing remark laced with a tinge of vitriol. Kate was her mother’s daughter, but with a wicked sense of humour attached.

  ‘You look… organised. As usual,’ Anna said. ‘Can I help?’

  She put Harry down, and he began pulling her towards the living room, demanding that she see his shark book.

  ‘You already are,’ grinned Kate. ‘Mum’s in the living room with Elin.’

  In the living room, Sian Gwynne had the eighteen-month-old Elin on her knee, reading about Peppa Pig going to the shops for the hundredth time.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Anna said and leaned in to kiss, only to be pushed away by an irate Elin, who said, ‘No, Ammma read Peppa Big.’

  They ate at one. Pork with crackling, potatoes, cauliflower, swede and red cabbage. Elin didn’t want it. Harry finished his in three minutes. They put up with Elin’s tiredness until Rob finished his meal, at which point he volunteered to take both children in the car with the promise of duck feeding for Harry and a nap for Elin. That left the women alone to linger over the home-made dessert: bread and butter pudding with extra sultanas, topped with Joe’s Ice Cream.

  Food of the gods.

  They talked mostly about the children; Harry’s propensity for serious statements and how Elin was turning into a toddler with a mind of her own, which brought forth a nod of sanguine understanding from their grandmother and several anecdotes about Kate’s notorious toddler temper. It was good, it was family, and as they cleared away the dishes, Anna began to believe that their mother would behave.

  Until they were at coffee.

  While Kate fus
sed over the Nespresso machine, Anna sat in the dining room with her mum who turned to her brightly. ‘You’ll never guess who I bumped into outside the post office last week.’

  Anna bit back the caustic remark. She left those to Kate these days. She didn’t trust her emotional brakes enough.

  ‘Tim’s mother,’ said Anna’s mum, after a dramatic pause.

  ‘Tim who?’

  ‘Tim, you know. Your Tim. Timothy Lambert, the boy you almost got engaged to!’

  Anna suppressed a grimace. ‘How was she?’

  ‘Very well. She was asking after you.’

  Anna stayed silent. There’d be more to come.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised. You went out for almost three years, remember? Such a nice boy. Lovely manners.’ She shook her head. ‘I still don’t understand what went wrong there.’

  ‘Isn’t it enough just to know that it did?’ Anna said. This was old and well-trodden ground. Well-trodden, rutted and now riddled with mines. But her attempt at dismissing the conversation fell on selectively deaf ears.

  ‘Oh, we had a lovely chat. He’s doing well for himself. Travelling salesman for a drug company. Lovely car. A BMW, I think.’

  Anna sighed and dropped her head.

  ‘What? Aren’t you pleased for him?’

  ‘If it was true, I might be. But it isn’t, Mum.’

  Kate came in with the coffees.

  ‘I was just telling Kate about my meeting Tim’s mother. Tim’s doing so well for himself.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Really?’

  Clever Kate. Just the right word, with eyebrows raised, placating her mother with implied interest, and then adding an off-stage one-eyed squint at Anna to let her know that her mother was batshit for even suggesting it.

  Her mum turned her gaze back to Anna. ‘Perhaps you ought to look him up.’