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
